xgo VS quickjs

I see, in this thread, talks about what Sciter does and does not offer.

It's not the only alternative to Electron, but it might be one that offers predictable and repeatable results.

I released a small open source project on HN last week (https://github.com/Fusion/pngsource) and I wrote its backend logic in Go. I built the frontend using Tailwind (https://tailwindcss.com) and DaisyUI (https://daisyui.com) and, using Go compiler flags, I can release the app using both WebView (github.com/webview/webview) (which, yes, does require the host OS' collaboration) and Wails (wails.app) (which also does.)

On Linux/AMD64, the binary's size is 3.7M when building for WebView, and 6.8M when targeting Wails.

The way the app works is I drag/drop files to the UI, magic happens, and I use github.com/ncruces/zenity to prompt the user for a save location.

I cross-compile the apps using xgo (https://github.com/karalabe/xgo)

It's been working pretty well on Linux, Windows, MacOS. I think WebView's approach of limiting the feature set is working well as it feels more "native" than Wails (better refreshes and resize operations for instance)

However, I already have a few tickets reporting that, for instance, the app is displayed as a blank window in some environments. And it's hard to debug remotely, obviously. So, this is where Sciter may be a better option.

The test program runs great on macOS, but when I use xgo to cross-compile it for Linux, all it outputs is:

And, xgo to build cross-platform from Linux; yet I can run in Windows and macOS.

It uses service workers to cache static files, by the time it opens up you already free to be offline, try toggle network switch to verify.

It has download link at bottom of the about page ([accdoo.app/about]) which you could then self host it by dropping into any static hosting services.

btw, the Pi feature was by-product from the original App but I won't expand here, if you'd like to learn more, please checkout its two Show HN post (39115559 and 39138957) previously.

[wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chudnovsky_algorithm

[quickjs/pi]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/pi.html

[pi_bigint.js]: https://github.com/bellard/quickjs/blob/master/examples/pi_b...

[accdoo.app/about]: https://accdoo.app/about#releases

[39115559]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39115559

[39138957]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138957

Just go with quickjs, I think this is what you are looking for.

https://bellard.org/quickjs/

QuickJS

I think QuickJS, written in C, is a user-"friendly" starting point for implementing ECMA-262. Documentation QuickJS Javascript Engine.

There is a readme on the project's main page: https://bellard.org/quickjs/

The newsworthy bit here is that the activity seemed to have stalled for year or two and now Fabrice pushed a few fixes and made a new release.

Just to demonstrate GitHub repositories do not necessarily reflect upon a programmers' body of work, Fabrice Bellard has one (1) repository published on GitHub, quickjs. Compare the list of work on Bellard's home page https://bellard.org/.

> I am still confused, it's a JavaScript runtime intended to be deployed to JavaScript/Wasm runtimes?

Seemingly.

> Why does a JavaScript runtime need a JavaScript runtime?

Because if you want to create a Service Worker server for CloudFlare Workers and other JavaScript/Wasm runtimes, that's the only option for doing that AFAIK.

FWIW, this isn't a new idea. For example, Figma uses QuickJS (https://bellard.org/quickjs/) for their plug-in runtime: https://www.figma.com/blog/an-update-on-plugin-security/