CrystApp

Desktop apps Development framework for Crystal-lang

100 times smaller than an Electron app

CrystApp : WebView apps written in Crystal

Self-contained.
Easy to distribute.
100 times smaller than an Electron app
Faster and more energy efficient than an electron app.
Safer than Electron.js : Statically compiled and statically typed : most bugs are caught at compile time (not at run-time)

Status :

MacOS, Linux : working at developing a CLI tool to replace the makefile.
Windows 10, 11 : WebView : The Webview part (client part) now works under Windows 11.
Windows 10, 11 : Currenttly busy with trying to make the archiving part compatible with Windows (server part).

In short:

"Wails for Crystal".
"Electron for Crystal.

(The alpha version uses a Makefile as CLI for the moment)

Prerequisites:

npm (for Svelte)
Crystal

TODO

THANKS

A big thank to the Rucksack development team (https://github.com/m-o-e), https://github.com/busyloop/rucksack
A big thanks to the Crystal developers team : straight-shoota
A big thanks to npn (on https://forum.crystal-lang.org)

USES

Crystal: https://crystal-lang.org
Svelte (with Vite): https://svelte.dev
Webview : https://github.com/naqvis/webview
Rucsack : https://github.com/busyloop/rucksack
npm (in order to install Svelte).

Mac OS and Linux

Should work as is.

Windows

The system will have to be modified slighly to accomodate for the current lack of multi-threading in Crystal under Winwows.

DEMO (alpha version)

git clone https://github.com/serge-hulne/CrystApp
cd CrystApp
make init
make init_svelte
make svelte_build
make app_test

To run the app again without re-building it

open . (and click on the app's icon) or
open App.app or
make run