hydro-sdk VS Comet

There is already a project trying to bring Typescript into Flutter, but its on early development: https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk This will also probably create many extra pains for developers since existing Dart packages would have to be wrapped.

It's probably vastly more trouble than it's worth, but you could technically write the package in Typescript and use Hydro SDK to compile it to Lua bytecode that can run on the Dart VM with Flutter bindings, then distribute that bytecode with a package that wraps the Hydro API.

As an open source author, I've been thinking about some general and domain specific optimizations https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk/issues/797 I'd love to chat if OP has time.

In terms of interoperability, the short answer is mostly-yes. Any Dart code can be made to interoperate with code written using Hydro. Taking an existing Dart package and making it useable from Hydro is automated. The tooling isn't quite ready for prime time (nor is the entire SDK) https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk/tree/master/lib/swid

Hydro-SDK has a small Dart-like language built into it to support binding generation (https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk/tree/master/lib/swid/frontend/swidi).

The analyzer API is enormous. I've had a lot of success using the analyzer API, but abstracting over it with my own ASTs that can be manipulated and transformed (https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk/tree/master/lib/swid) and using code builder (https://github.com/dart-lang/code_builder) to emit Dart code.

I've been having a lot of fun writing a compiler in Dart (in a pure functional style, with pattern matching and sum types!) over here https://github.com/hydro-sdk/hydro-sdk/tree/master/lib/swid

> the first, MVP-style, attempt will be using Electron.

Good choice.

If you want to stick to HTML...WebView2 is suppose to replace it, but it assumes your backend code is .NET or C++, instead of JS/Node.js. Microsoft Teams is using it.

If you want to use native Windows UI components from JS code, then React Native for Windows is recommended. Facebook Messenger is using it.

All approaches require C# or C++ modules to be used to interact with the Windows Platform. Or there is: https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge.

The recommended approach is WinUI 3 which would involve C#/C++ and XAML.

To SwiftUI/React/JetPack are called module-view-update (MVU). There is an MVU for C# called Comet. https://github.com/dotnet/Comet#key-concepts

The benefit at least with the approach instead of embedding Avalonia inside Maui is you could potentially use non xaml frameworks for ui as long as they support Maui as a target. Stuff like Comet or Blazor mobile bindings would be possible aside from xaml. Especially if they're coming from Blazor web or code based ui frameworks like flutter which makes it appealing.

That was using the experimental Comet extension and lib, based on .NET MAUI. You can find instructions here: https://github.com/dotnet/Comet

There are also experimental libraries for .NET MAUI, which let's you create UI only with C#: Comet, MauiReactor

The MVU library is called Comet. The lead developer recently left Microsoft but im still seeing commits on the repo which is a good sign!

Yeah the hybrid blazor stuff is interesting. So is https://github.com/dotnet/Comet.

The XAML API is definitely more compact overall which is unfortunate, mostly because a lot of the devs prefer XAML. I've always preferred code-based UI though. Theres some 2ndish/3rd party options with Comet, which changes the UI pattern to MVU and C# Markup, which might not be updated for MAUI yet.

All the C# parts for Hybrid (including the components themselves) are running natively. Only the UI part (e.g. html, css) under the Web View is running web tech (html, css) under a native webview of the platform. But you can also add native MAUI controls if you wanted to (either via XAML, or Comet) and mix and match as that webview control that Blazor uses is just a MAUI control.

There is an alternative using MAUI .Net Comet