
Proton Native – React Native for the Desktop - bpierre
https://proton-native.js.org/#/
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wishinghand
Is this ready for production? Beta? Alpha?

I’m not super familiar with packaging desktop apps but I believe Windows
programs need a .dll file or few. Is there something on the roadmap for
setting up an MSI?

What about icons for system trays, alt-tabbing, desktop, and other locations?

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kusti8
It's not totally ready for production because the GUI library that I'm using
is not totally polished. My part I would say is Beta, and the GUI library is
versioned as alpha. For most tasks it will work fine. For more complex stuff
you will obviously want something more robust.

With Windows, the .dll is compiled on npm install, and that works perfectly.
Currently I don't think libui supports icons.

I chose libui because it is the only GUI library for JS that I could find. It
is nice and fits well with React, but it does have some holes. The author is
going to continue development soon, so some of the problems should be fixed in
the future.

A MSI can be generated using an installer such as NSIS.

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wishinghand
How is the memory usage compared to Electron?

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kusti8
Memory usage is a lot less. Electron has a full webbrowser running to display
the page, which this uses Gtk on Linux or cocoa on Mac etc.

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wishinghand
I'd love to see some benchmarks when you have a chance to update it.

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wishinghand
How does this work in general, once one finishes writing a React Native app?
As a developer, how would I get data from a server, same as a HTTP/AJAX call?

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kusti8
I don't really understand what you mean. To get data from a server, you can
just use normal nodejs to send a http request. Usually you'll have it so that
it works when a callback is triggered, such as a button press.

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wishinghand
Looks like the answer is yes- I haven't done desktop developing, so I wasn't
sure how it worked in these Javascript-wrapped-as-native apps.

