Thrust: Chromium-based cross-platform, cross-language application framework

by mhernandez1988 • 12 years ago

184 55 12 years ago

spolu10• 12 years ago

Quick note on comparison with node-webkit / atom-shell:

node-webkit and atom-shell embeds NodeJS along the chromium content module forcing its user to use not only NodeJS but a particular build of it.

On the contrary, Thrust embeds the Chromium content module and exposes an API on the standard IO, which makes it bindable in any language and works perfectly well as a dependency with vanilla nodeJS / Go / Python

Makes the distribution of cross-platform GUI apps through the pip/npm possible.

mhernandez19889• 12 years ago

Correct, there have also been other similar implementations along the same vain, but they all attempt to inject one technology into another. Thrust takes a different approach, it is itself the chromium content library, with some added libraries, and an rpc interface. This allows it to be used without forcing another library implementor to `inject` their code into it.

notastartup4• 12 years ago

This would be absolutely phenomenal if you could have the entire pip ecosystem and write cross platform desktop apps in python.

spolu10• 12 years ago

pip or npm yes!

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

Sounds great. Just one question about the Windows screenshot - why are the fonts so jagged?

spolu10• 12 years ago

Screenshot from a remote server running on AWS. I guess the settings are screwed up on that machine!

c0brac0bra• 12 years ago

Not sure if it's the same issue, but I ran into problems with node-webkit and jagged font-icon animations due to them not being able to package direct3d dlls with the project. Simply popping them in on my own solved it.

morganrallen4• 12 years ago

As a proof of concept I knocked up JankyBrowser in about 3 hours. Nagivation? Check. Tabs? Check (how long did other browser take to get those!). All in a little over 6K of JS.

https://gist.github.com/morganrallen/f07f59802884bcdcad4a

spolu10• 12 years ago

The only browser that fits in a gist!

skrebbel• 12 years ago

Here, a browser that fits in a .bat file:

    @echo off
    "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"

notastartup4• 12 years ago

My god. I'm just awestruck, I just ran it and it worked beautifully.

The same thing in Java Swing took me 3 weeks 4 years ago.

morganrallen4• 12 years ago

Thanks! Not too bad for a couple hours on a sick day.

christiangenco• 12 years ago

...wow! This is a really compelling

I know it's really fashionable to hate on javascript, but there's really something to be said for being able to code a web browser with tools you can learn on Khan Academy.

al2o3cr• 12 years ago

"var webview = document.createElement("webview");"

Turns out, it's pretty easy to code a web browser in ANYTHING if one of the primitives you can instantiate is A WEB BROWSER...

beagle3• 12 years ago

Cookies are handled by Chromium, I suppose?

Or are they completely ignored?

mcdermed• 12 years ago

As a web developer this is a very cool project. It's a very simple sandbox to develop a custom application or even customize my browsing experience. Being built on the current stable release of Chrome makes it even better.

notastartup4• 12 years ago

So my question is what's your rationale for using Thrust vs. Node-webkit?

spolu10• 12 years ago

Distribution through npm directly. X-language also.

Make sense?

spolu10• 12 years ago

Additionaly it's much easier to use native modules! No recompile needed

joshguthrie2• 12 years ago

I'm curious about this. How are native modules compiled if I want to deploy from my architecture X to windows, os x and linux?

mhernandez19889• 12 years ago

Node-Webkit is hacky at best. Atom-Shell is a major improvement on Node-Webkit, however not quite there. Native modules need to be compiled for a completely different target.

Thrust takes it a step further, improving on the past. Thrust uses the same backing library as Atom-Shell (brightray) to expose the Chromium Content Library.

Thrust is cross-platform cross-language. Use a similar familiar api from any language you want, or roll your own. No need to use javascript on the backend if you dont want to.

For example, Go-Thrust can compile, this is a particular advantage for distributing applications.

mhernandez19889• 12 years ago

Now to add some more context, Thrust's predecessor (ExoBrowser) still used embedded NodeJS, this made it incredibly difficult to package native modules with applications. The Thrust team learned from the mistakes of the past and decided to try to simplify the stack as much as possible to allow true composability.

swah3• 12 years ago

Could one write a fast text editor using Thrust? Can one use C++ instead of Python/JS/Go?

xtacy• 12 years ago

I get this error when building it. Any thoughts?

    $ go get -u github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust                                                                                          
    package github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust
    	imports github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust
    	imports github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust: no buildable Go source files in /Users/user/.gocode/src/github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust

lstamour• 12 years ago

There appear to be different instructions you can try at https://github.com/miketheprogrammer/go-thrust/

swah3• 12 years ago

Got the same on Win7.

mhernandez19889• 12 years ago

Apologies to all, we are restructuring the application to work better with go get. You can try with the -d flag to avoid building files. this should download the application to the proper gopath. then you can use the instructions from the go-thrust repo homepage.

JasonFruit• 12 years ago

I think this is the first time I've seen the phrase, "requires Python 3." It's certainly the first time I've seen it on something that I want badly enough to mess with it.

jpgvm• 12 years ago

To be fair the Python bindings are pretty simple, you could easily implement it in Python 2. You do need evented I/O however so you could write either gevent or twisted bindings.

spolu10• 12 years ago

Yes exactly. I started coding in Python 2 days ago so I went with what I found (asyncio) but it could be easily recoded in Python2!

hugh4life• 12 years ago

I was happy they had "requires Python 3" because cefpython keeps going back and forth on Python 3 support.

hardwaresofton2• 12 years ago

This is really awesome. Reminds me of http://www.tidesdk.org

Honestly, I'm super prepared for the world where HTML/CSS is used for all the GUIs (while HTML/CSS are not perfect, I think they've done a pretty good job being flexible enough style to millions of user-facing GUI applications, also known as web sites, for so long). I don't think many people agree, but the day I don't have to try and choose between TK, GTK, QT, and some other smaller framework is gonna be a good day.

Not quite the same (since this runs on chromium, and I'm not sure that TideSDK does also -- at least it's been around too long that it feels like they couldn't possibly have).

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

This is not a popular view, but I think as developers we should focus on one platform and serve it well, instead of making nearly tolerable apps for every platforms.

hardwaresofton2• 12 years ago

Some days I agree with you -- optimization/platform-specific code definitely has it's place (we would be nowhere without it, all the web stuff stands on shoulders of giants on other giants), and targeted building.

But other days I'm struggling to use objective-c.

joshguthrie2• 12 years ago

I'm supplying a node-webkit app to thousand of clients and I feel you.

We thought "Hey, it runs on everything!" would be nice for our future roadmap...but didn't we say the same about Java?

albertzeyer• 12 years ago

Node that there is also the same-called project: http://thrust.github.io/

venti• 12 years ago

This is great! Installed it via PIP and it just worked. I would love to see this combined with https://github.com/enthought/jigna / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHSXq5jfv_4 .

roxtar• 12 years ago

Can someone tell me use-case wise how this differs from PhantomJS and CEF?

morganrallen4• 12 years ago

Unlike PhantomJS, this is not a headless browser (though can be!), its a browser that can be designed in HTML/CSS/JS. This is to say, the navigation buttons are controlled by you, your own download manager, etc. Time and imagination are your limits.

Charlieee• 12 years ago

You could write a browser in assembler. Only time and imagination are your limits.

liuyanghejerry• 12 years ago

Seems nice, especially with variant bindings instead of only one. One more question, how to update the whole application after distributed, including HTML/CSS/JS files and the framework binaries? Do I still have to make one updater(which is not really an easy task if you want a fancy UI), or is Chromium's update framework included already?

stereosteve• 12 years ago

Awesome project. Breach is also very cool. What are the plans for the future of Breach?

morganrallen4• 12 years ago

It will get rebuilt on top of Thrust.

Thrust: Chromium-based cross-platform, cross-language application framework

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