commune-os
Local desktop app
🚧 rewrite pending 🚧
Prior art:
- https://getpublii.com/
- https://kinsta.com/devkinsta/
- https://kinsta.com/blog/install-wordpress-locally/
- https://localwp.com/
- https://news.livebook.dev/introducing-the-livebook-desktop-app-4C8dpu
The closest equivalent to what we’re doing is Publii. This is also related to commune-os/weird#6.
Our v1 MVP will be radically simpler than any of the above, as all we are managing is a single-page linksapp.
The initial v0.0.1 prototype however could literally be just a single button that says ‘Build Site’. For starters we just wanna be able to do what is currently done with two lines in the terminal, with one click of a button.
The installable app will be made with Tauri.
I think an alternative to a desktop app to consider is an offline capable web application. I've actually done this already with Chord9.
Once you visit the web app the first time, it caches the application locally, and you can use it fully offline. The only issue is discovery, because a user might not even think to use a web-app when they're offline.
Chrome lets you install PWAs as desktop applications, which makes it more clear that, "hey I can use this offline", but firefox doesn't support that. It may be as simple as advertising it properly that it works even offline, but this saves us having to do builds, allows us to ship out automatic updates, and even works on mobile, without having to worry about desktop packaging or anything, or having users install things.
You can even disable the automatic update thing if you want, and have the user decide when they want to update.
