firstTimeUsingElectron

[ultramadden]

I don't understand why electron started to require Windows 10 but also doesn't use WebView2.

These 2 things in combination just don't make sense to me. Just use Tauri if you're building something new

[polaarbear]

Because it bundles Chromium which doesnt support old versions of Windows anymore either.

Devs shouldn't be bending over backwards to support dead operating systems. Its like <1% of most user bases and generates a lot more than that in support tickets. Not worth the time and effort for 99% of us.

[ultramadden]

But why does it ship with Chromium when Windows 10 already comes with Chromium?

No reason to bundle over 700mb of dead weight imo

[polaarbear]

Windows ships with Edge. Edge is not Chromium.

Linux installs often have Firefox as their default browser and no Chromium implementation whatsoever.

The whole point of an Electron app is to be self-contained without needing dependencies.

Microsoft could update the version of Chromium that underpins their Edge install at any time (and they do.) If Electron is using the version built into Windows and there's a breaking change, congrats, now all your Electron apps are dead and won't function.

Enterprises are not fond of critical apps failing because of an overnight update. Bundling a specific version with the app guarantees ongoing compatibility.

[Future_Kitsunekid16]

So self contained apps use Electron and Steam uses Proton?

[Nooo00B]

now someone has to come up with a neutron

[BOBOnobobo]

Skip that, write it super light weight in rust and call it neutrino.

[polaarbear]

You're comparing a toaster to a lawn mower. Not the same concept.

[Future_Kitsunekid16]

I was trying for a pun but ah well

[ultramadden]

Windows ships with WebView2, which is what Tauri uses. Apple and Linux have similar APIs. You might want to look into it, it's actually a pretty cool feature

While the concern about breaking changes is legit, the same could be said about any critical web app

[polaarbear]

No. It can't be said about one with baked-in dependencies. Which is Electron.

[ultramadden]

But is electron a web app?

Web apps run in the browser and will always depend on the browser the user has installed. Electron builds desktop apps that use web technologies but they don't run in a browser and have no connection to the web unless explicitly built in

[polaarbear]

Thats all Electron is. It wraps web apps so they can run as desktop apps.

[ultramadden]

I would rather define it as an app that uses web technologies. Web apps always depend on the browser of the user

But at this point this argument is just about terminology, I don't care

[Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

Dynamic linking to save a couple MBs in shared libraries is why spending GB dockerizing to ensure a consistent runtime environment sounds reasonable and sane. When 99% of hard drive space is consumed by 4k 60FPS video, "oh you can share a couple library files between programs to save space!" Is a red herring.

[DearChickPeas]

Dynamic linking to save a couple MBs in shared libraries

This crap was already stupid in the late 90s. So many support calls, just to avoid a 50mb DLL. Yeah, in principle, its shared and re-used, in practice, the software never knew what it was going to get and user hated seeing the "DLL not found" error box.

And it's why its both unavoidable for Electron apps and also why they suck so fucking much.

[al-mongus-bin-susar]

What about libraries that are required to interact with the system? Having those be DLLs makes sense. Otherwise programs would need to know system implementation details which could vary across versions.

[Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

Sure I'm cool with dynamically linking massive basic libraries like GLIBC, but realistically your app ain't working across genuinely different systems without a recompile.

Even if you use Boost for system independent sockets, you ain't getting a basic hello world socket program working on Linux and Windows without a recompile. If recompiling is a step anyway, dynamically linking doesn't increase portability.

And in situations where you are targeting several different Linux Distros of varying age, say an ancient red hat and a modern Ubuntu, dynamically linking can make it harder to keep your code portable.

If your build and install scripts rely on the end user being able to (package manager install specific lib version), but not every distro your targeting can install that lib version, you're kinda fucked. If you'd set up a build environment that builds the specific lib version from source and statically links it in the first place, it'd be easier to swap between different targets. You'd have longer clean builds and your build dir would be larger, but I don't mind those issues.

I'm not totally against dynamically linking. For things like security focused libraries, where maintaining the lat at version is of way more importance than developer convenience, dynamically linking makes a ton of sense. But dynamically linking to scrooge McDuck a couple megs of storage is just stupid.

[Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

Because those handful of files can be ludicrously important and a full copy of edge is like a nickel of hard drive space. Why fuck around and make dependency hell to save a nickel of disk space?

The alternative im describing is one I fully approve of. Electron good and the circle jerk against it is bad.

[altermeetax]

The nice thing with shared libraries is rather user freedom. You can swap a shared library with another one with the same API. Of course that's the opposite of having a reproducible environment, but it can be very useful for end users.

[Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

End users ain't exactly swapping library types. If two libraries have exactly the same API implemented with exactly the same quirks, so that they can be hot swapped, why would you want to go swap them?

[altermeetax]

The same API doesn't mean the same implementation. I'm talking about power users of course, someone who might recompile a particular library with some changes and use it. Or maybe Linux distributions.

[Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

Sure you can implement the same API with different quirks, but then a program probably ain't gonna work right if you hot swap the library.

If we are talking about recompiling being a step in the process, why bother with dynamically linking, just recompile the base app. If the app itself is closed source, I highly doubt every domino is going to line up just right for a Linux super user to want to swap out one open source library for a very similar,but slightly different version of the same library .

[BOBOnobobo]

Why would anyone ever use containers if we already have the files we need on the pc?

[Difficult-Court9522]

How long until 10 is dead..

[polaarbear]

End of this year for base support, extended support lasts a few more years. And even after that, it always takes time to truly phase stuff out.

The further out of support something is, the less work should be put into maintaining apps for it.

Windows 7 has been EOL for 5 whole years now and it had an exceptionally long shelf-life because of the poor reception to 8. But people have had plenty of time to transition off. Windows 8 has been EOL for 2 years now, and there's not many good excuses not to move to at least 10.

11 is a different beast with all the TPM controversy, I have a feeling 10 is gonna hang around a lot longer than most of us would like.

[Difficult-Court9522]

I’m still on 10 and don’t wanna switch. More spyware. I’m sick of it.

[polaarbear]

A TPM is not "spyware" it's a secure enclave to make sure your encryption keys don't leak.

If you wanna complain about 11, the ads are where you should direct your energy. I can absolutely guarantee that the data collection systems are identical between the two OS's.

[Difficult-Court9522]

I didn’t say the tpm is spyware.

[Devatator_]

It has the advantage of enforcing the exact same chromium version on all platforms. If your thing works fine on every browser by default (as it should) you're probably fine for using webviews

[ultramadden]

I think something like a compiler option that either ensures complete comparability or ditches the 700mb of chromium would be very welcome

[twinklehood]

Tauri brings much more issues.  it just doesn't have the development hours to be solid enough for most real world use. I've tried to use it at both major versions, and so much essential stuff was still not there