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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Programming => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on May 18, 2022, 02:32:24 pm

Title: Desktop Apps from JavaScript - Electron?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 18, 2022, 02:32:24 pm
Hi

As a theoretical exercise I want to know what would be required to port some javascript applications to run as desktop applications.

I will like to see Element, a Matrix chat tool (https://github.com/vector-im), running as a desktop application. Currently Element is running on Dooble (You can test it here (https://riot.im/app/#/room/#os2world:matrix.org)), so my guess is that we already have several of the libraries that it uses ported to OS/2.

But what is needed to have the "desktop" version (https://github.com/vector-im/element-desktop) of Element running on OS/2 as stand alone?
It seems that part of the trick is Electron (https://www.electronjs.org/) ("If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app.")
It is needed for Electron to be ported? Is it some kind of compiler that will interpret Javascript to a desktop OS/2 app? Is it portable to OS/2 or we miss more things?

Regards
Title: Re: Desktop Apps from JavaScript - Electron?
Post by: jailbird on May 18, 2022, 08:25:42 pm
As far as I'm aware, Electron uses Blink & V8, which are the Chromium/Chrome rendering engine and JavaScript VM.

So it would basically require porting Chromium to OS/2 :(.
Title: Re: Desktop Apps from JavaScript - Electron?
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 18, 2022, 11:59:05 pm
As far as I'm aware, Electron uses Blink & V8, which are the Chromium/Chrome rendering engine and JavaScript VM.

So it would basically require porting Chromium to OS/2 :(.

Dooble is Chromium based, so Blink or Webkit and V8 are available. What we would need is a framework. Looking quickly I don't see what Electron uses but I'd guess GTK.
Actually it seems to be its own framework. I see on Linux it does use GTK but a quick search doesn't show a QT version.
The equivalent under QT seems to be nodegui, https://github.com/nodegui/nodegui (https://github.com/nodegui/nodegui) seems to use Mesa on Linux so 3D graphics probably needed or more porting.
Title: Re: Desktop Apps from JavaScript - Electron?
Post by: jailbird on May 19, 2022, 02:28:42 am
Dooble is Chromium based, so Blink or Webkit and V8 are available. What we would need is a framework. Looking quickly I don't see what

Duh, brainfart. I knew it used Qt WebEngine, I just forgot that Qt WebEngine switched from WebKit to Blink. Teach me for replying before my morning caffeine, sorry!
Title: Re: Desktop Apps from JavaScript - Electron?
Post by: Jochen Schäfer on May 19, 2022, 08:18:33 am
IF we could get a performant port of Electron, this would open the door for VS Code/VSCodium and a lot other stuff.