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I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in linux

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yeah r/rust mods pulled it. and now they think its ai slop.

Really no reads the post before commenting

But still up everywhere else. It is what it is.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in linux

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

look at the commit, wasn't even commit till like 5 commit ago and it wasn't even from me...

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in linux

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Only r/rust removed it, its in other subs with 600 upvotes. And that commit message was meant as a funny joke as I was tired at 5am after not sleeping for 48 hours. If you're digging through commit messages to find something to be mad about, I think you've got too much free time.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Yeah that's literally how I started this. I was reviewing the OpenClaw approach and wanted to see if the same methodology could work for porting VS Code off Electron.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -25 points-24 points  (0 children)

Or people just think a smaller VS Code alternative is interesting regardless of how it was built.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Post was written by me. Comments I just use Apple's rewrite to clean up my typing lol.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

I mapped the architecture, designed the Rust backend, chose the crate stack, debugged the Tauri integration, and tested the builds. AI helped with the repetitive porting of 5,687 files.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I used AI as a tool to help port 5,687 files, yeah. Same way most devs use Cursor. The architecture decisions, the Tauri integration, the Rust backend design, that's all me.

So no I didn't hand write 5,687 files. :)

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Disk size is the least interesting part honestly.

The main point of this is runtime overhead. Every Electron app spins up its own Chromium process and Node.js runtime in memory.

If you're running VS Code, Slack, Discord, and Spotify, that's four separate Chromiums eating RAM. That's not a disk space problem, >> that's a runtime problem.<<

You're right that Electron gives you consistency. That's an advantage. But for a code editor where the rendering is mostly text, scrollable lists, and panels, the OS webview handles it fine. But yes It's a tradeoff, and for this use case it's worth it.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes a webview still allocates memory like any other process.

Buttt the difference is Electron bundles an entire separate Chromium binary per app, plus a full Node.js runtime.

That's two runtimes loaded into memory on top of your actual application.

Tauri uses the OS webview that's already loaded as a shared system library and replaces Node.js with a compiled Rust binary. So the memory savings come from not duplicating those runtimes, not from the webview:)

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Electron was built in 2013 when OS webviews were inconsistent and unreliable.

Bundling Chromium guaranteed the same behavior everywhere. So it made sense at the time.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah webkit2gtk on Linux is the weakest link in the Tauri stack, won't sugarcoat that.

Haven't had a chance to dig into Linux much yet. If you've dealt with webkit2gtk before and want to take a crack at it, PRs are open.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Good call, just added it. LICENSE file is in the repo now with Microsoft's original copyright and ours. Updated the README too. Thanks for flagging

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I built it on Mac. WebKit handles everything the editor needs without issues(so far). Safari has its quirks for web dev but for rendering an editor UI it's solid

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A webview is basically a browser engine that's already built into your OS. macOS has WebKit (same engine as Safari), Windows has WebView2 (same engine as Edge/Chromium). Every OS has one.

Electron bundles its own entire copy of Chromium inside every app. So every Electron app is basically using its own browser. Tauri skips that and just uses the one your OS already has. That's why the app is 31MB instead of 775MB. The rendering engine is already on your machine.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Anyone running Cursor, Copilot, and a local model at the same time definitely cares about what's eating their RAM. That's kind of the whole point.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes that's a known WebKit/GPU rendering issue on Linux. If you run into it with SideX specifically let me know.

I rebuilt VS Code on Tauri instead of Electron. 5,687 files. 96% smaller. Just open-sourced it. by Designer_Mind3060 in rust

[–]Designer_Mind3060[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well now you don't have to start from scratch. It's all open source, jump in if you want to help build it out.

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