xgo VS sciter-js-sdk

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.

How tiny is the output? What is the API? (I couldn't find any documentation. I thought maybe it's in the Help menu in the app itself but all I found was this https://i.imgur.com/6puOMIe.png - On that note, what level of JS is supported? As far as I can tell it uses this https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk which is based on Fabrice Bellard's QuickJS ) Is there sound?

JavaScript & Electron Sciter!

Having normal procedural language for build automation is of course useful. That's for those 10% of cases when "standard" build DSL (make,CMake,etc.) simply do not have facilities.

But the rest of 90% tasks should have compact (easily readable) definitions.

I personally found that Premake5 has quite good balance for these tasks.

Premake files are plain .lua files and due to Lua syntax they are easily readable. And if needed you can call from them procedures defined in again Lua.

So typical project (multiplatform) definition looks pretty readable, for example one project from Sciter SDK:

https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/blob/main/premake5....

More details.

That's why in Sciter I've extended JSX with translation meta instruction @:

Note Tauri is full fledged Client/Server with WebView (client) is running in separate process with RPC between UI process and Rust code (Server).

For the comparison:

Standalone Sciter (scapp.exe, https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/tree/main/bin) takes ~8 MB of RAM (with minimal Cairo and GDI backends).

That's 20 times less than even Tauri.

WebView based solutions are not suitable for applets - small portable desktop applications.

scapp.exe ( Standalone sciter engine ) takes 45 Mb showing its default "about" document.

It does support , with limited support but still.

See: https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/tree/main/samples/c...

Sciter also supports immediate mode painting on any element (like in DearIMGUI):

    element.paintBackground = function(gfx) {