Tell HN: Building a universal electron app for Mac is a complete nightmare

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33394807

by WolfOliver • 4 years ago

18 32 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Everytime I have to release a new version of my electron app, I spend more time fixing the release process than working on the app. It's alway some thing else broken.

xet73• 4 years ago

Is any other way to develop Mac app any easier?

b20000• 4 years ago

yes, use objective C or c++ and osx frameworks

or use a cross platform c++ toolkit like juce

avoid web garbage for desktop apps

eyelidlessness• 4 years ago

Or Swift, which will feel a lot more at home for JS/TS developers.

toastal• 4 years ago

CLI and TUIs still work too

bartvk• 4 years ago

Objective-C? I can't imagine anyone would use that for a new project.

superchroma• 4 years ago

If you like .NET, Avalonia is an option which targets OSX in addition to other platforms.

cercatrova2• 4 years ago

Flutter works well for cross platform.

xenospn• 4 years ago

They’re also incredibly slow and resource intensive. Just use Swift!

ronsor• 4 years ago

... right up until you realize that your app has to be cross platform

splittydev• 4 years ago

Well there's Tokamak. If enough people start contributing to Tokamak, it would actually be viable to write cross-platform apps in Swift. (Especially since Swift itself is already cross-platform).

iamgopal• 4 years ago

Tried flutter ?

groffee• 4 years ago

Tauri is meant to be good https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

CharlesW• 4 years ago

Tauri comes with unique considerations of its own. https://blog.logrocket.com/tauri-electron-comparison-migrati...

TechBro8615• 4 years ago

sidenote: the logrocket blog is incredible. It's often one of the first results for my searches over a wide range of topics including TypeScript and Rust. And it usually has the most informative content and sometimes even the answer I'm looking for!

I'm not in the market for their product, but I absolutely love their blog.

hulitu• 4 years ago

Building a universal electron app for Mac

If it's for Mac, why does it have to be universal ?

xwowsersx2• 4 years ago

They mean a universal Mac binary, I believe

WolfOliver2• 4 years ago

it means running on intel and m1 chips

asmmoto• 4 years ago

You can as well, make separate builds for M1 and Intel. The size of each binary will be smaller.

hoten• 4 years ago

If you're set on using web tech, why Electron over just an installable PWA? Consider if you need whatever apis only electron gets you.

siquick• 4 years ago

Can you add a PWA to the Mac App Store?

xet73• 4 years ago

There is some way for iOS, and some iOS apps work on M1, so maybe. Although Apple has been removing PWA style apps from App Store, so better check newest requirements somewhere at docs.

https://www.pwabuilder.com

https://docs.pwabuilder.com/#/builder/app-store

hyperupcall• 4 years ago

Safari heavily nerfs PWAs, making their use more questionable. It's possible that they also need more access to the underlying computer.

xet73• 4 years ago

Really? I'll test. Usually PWA icon is added this way:

https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA

perryizgr8• 4 years ago

Can you just target intel? Anyway the emulation in Mac OS can deal with it. Why take the extra effort to build two versions.

WolfOliver2• 4 years ago

Everybody is asking for native m1 builds, even if there is not that much of a performance difference for some apps.

infamouscow• 4 years ago

Does Electron not run on macOS amd64e?

Unless you're taking advantage of some kind of x86-64 specific feature, I don't understand why it's at all a challenge to port an app to arm64e. Could you elaborate a bit on what those problems are? FWIW, I'm more intrigued as an outsider than someone that can offer any meaningful help.

mdaniel2• 4 years ago

The problem is that Electron, itself, is a macho binary and thus subject to the same architecture constraints as any other app. The "universal binary" the OP is mentioning is taking advantage of the "fat" macho format, which bundles multiple target architectures in one executable, so the user does not need to know which they have in order to download the correct one. Or doubly so in the App Store where there is no "download the correct one"

mike_hearn• 4 years ago

Take a look at https://conveyor.hydraulic.dev/ - it supports Electron apps and makes releasing much easier than with the standard Electron tooling.

Tell HN: Building a universal electron app for Mac is a complete nightmare

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