web-to-desktop-framework-compariso VS quickjs

https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Electron comes out looking impressive at runtime!

Memory Usage - (Average of runs) Median of difference between system measured free memory before execution and during execution)

> it's still a far cry from your ~200 Mb Electron hello world.

I think that projects that ship packaged web apps but attempt to use the system native web views where available are really nice, like Wails: https://wails.io/ (so for example, on Windows it would use Webview2, so you don't have to package an entire Chromium install yourself)

Here's a comparison of how the distribution sizes change, Wails in particular also has way faster builds than something like Tauri: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

That said, I wish we got more native software, or even something like LCL that can target Win32, GTK, Qt or whatever else is available. Sure, writing components that are available on a lot of platforms and work similarly everywhere is a pain for the developers, but I applaud the effort regardless, since the above solutions like Wails don't actually do anything for the memory usage and CPU cycles, whereas native GUI software is better for most apps that don't try to be very interactive.

I mean, most OSes already ship with a WebView component that you can use instead of shipping an entire browser runtime.

Wails does that: https://wails.io/

Tauri also does that: https://tauri.app/

That does help with the needed resources quite a bit: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Sadly it doesn’t change the memory usage much so the technology is still inherently wasteful, but on a certain level it feels like a lost battle - because web technologies often feel like the choice of least resistance when you want GUI software that will run on a bunch of platforms while not being annoying to develop (from the perspective of your run of the mill dev).

I looked into some alternatives a while back [1] and thought Neutralino looked promising except that it doesn't support node modules. I.e. you cannot use the existing ecosystem of node-stuff.

Still, glad there are many options for using web UI to create desktop apps these days.

[1]: Neutralino themselves link to this nice comparison table: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

> but it uses your system's existing browser

According to (1) that is incorrect. It uses WebKitGTK+.

(1) https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

I see a few mentions of QuickJS, but they all refer to the fork of Bellard's QuickJS https://bellard.org/quickjs/, which I think deserves a mention. It seems to be still active (last release 2025-04-26, GitHub mirror at https://github.com/bellard/quickjs shows some activity).

This is a fantastic approach.

BTW, it looks like the js engine is "QuickJS" [0]. (I'm not familiar with it myself.)

I like it because sqlite by itself lacks a host language. (e.g., Oracle's plsql, Postgreses pgplsql, Sqlserver's t-sql, etc). That is: code that runs on compute that is local to your storage.

That's a nice flexible design -- you can choose whatever language you want. But quite typically you have to bring one, and there are various complications to that.

It's quite powerful, BTW, to have the app-level code that acts on the app data live with the data. You can present cohesive app-level abstraction to the client (some examples people will hopefully recognize: applyResetCode(theCode) or authenticateSessionToken(), or whatever), which can be refined/changed without affecting clients. (Of course you still have to full power and flexibility of SQL and relational data for the parts of your app that need it.)

[0] https://bellard.org/quickjs/

Considering the extremes of prolific developers gives interesting contrast to dogmas such as "functions/files should never be above x lines", where `quickjs.c` is 50k lines and has functions that are hundreds of lines long:

https://github.com/bellard/quickjs/blob/master/quickjs.c

(Obviously different approaches suites different circumstances.)

And some lightweight alternatives like Bellard's QuickJS (https://bellard.org/quickjs/) in C and Kiesel (https://kiesel.dev/) in Zig.

Built on a highly optimized JavaScript runtime powered by QuickJS, Query offers fast startup times and efficient execution. Its built-in caching mechanism further enhances performance by storing function responses, reducing database load and latency. This focus on speed makes Query a standout choice for server-side rendering, especially in applications with many components.

Where the previous SDK was built on top of the QuickJS JavaScript engine and the Javy runtime, the new SDK is built on top of the Firefox browser’s SpiderMonkey engine, and the Bytecode Alliance’s StarlingMonkey runtime and ComponentizeJS WIT bindings generator.

I'm currently using Bellard's QuickJS engine on a new TypeScript project.