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

TODO.md

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