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Getting to know Tauri ​

What is Tauri? ​

Tauri is a rust-based engine that allows the creation of cross-platform apps that have a web frontend and a rust-based backend. As such, it is an alternative to electron, or flutter, that can target both mobile and desktop platforms.

Although it's still young, tauri already has a wide ecosystem of plugins that enable common desktop and mobile use cases.

You can learn more about it in the official Tauri documentation.

Backend ​

As we just learned, the backend for a Tauri app is written in rust. Let's understand how that backend works, so that you can edit its behavior to suit your needs, if necessary.

It's important that you take a look at the file src-tauri/src/lib.rs. This is now the main starting point for your hApp, which includes the tauri-plugin-holochain plugin. This plugin will run holochain under the hood, and converts the Tauri app in to a full holochain runtime.

Still in that file, take a closer look at the .setup() hook. This is the initialization code that will be run when your end-user app is executed. You can see that the scaffolded code already contains a simple initialization logic, that you can extend to any need you have to

Refer to the rust documentation for the tauri-plugin-holochain to learn all the commands that the plugin offers.

CLI ​

Tauri includes a powerful CLI that allows us to execute the different commands we need in our development lifecycle:

  • To start a development version of our app, run:
bash
npm run tauri dev
bash
yarn tauri dev
bash
pnpm tauri dev

WARNING

In the case of an end-user hApp, this command won't actually work, since it needs environment variables to connect to the holochain local services to be set. Use npm start instead.

  • To create a production build for the current platform, run:
bash
npm run tauri build
bash
yarn tauri build
bash
pnpm tauri build

NOTE

This is the command you need to run in order to create a release build for your app.

  • Generate the necessary icons for your app with:
bash
npm run tauri icon <PATH_TO_YOUR_ICON_IN_PNG_FORMAT>
bash
yarn tauri icon <PATH_TO_YOUR_ICON_IN_PNG_FORMAT>
bash
pnpm tauri icon <PATH_TO_YOUR_ICON_IN_PNG_FORMAT>

WARNING

Until you run this command with your icon, your app won't compile.

  • See all the available CLI commands with:
bash
npm run tauri
bash
yarn tauri
bash
pnpm tauri

And learn more about the CLI in the official Tauri guide.

Mobile ​

After the initial set up and scaffolding, our Tauri app can only be built for desktop apps. To enable mobile support, there is a bit more work that needs to be done.

Android Setup ​

Continue to the Android setup.

iOS Setup ​

WARNING

Coming soon! Holochain working on iOS is blocked by wasmer having an interpreter wasm engine...

Learn more about current mobile support in the FAQs.