Migrate to Tauri

[ChakshuGautam]

• Evaluate Tauri - install a new project => build to all 5 platforms but still continue to deploy it on Vercel
• Share builds on this ticket
• Review - @geeky-abhishek @ChakshuGautam @Harshil-Jani
• Actual migration of the branch dev to tauri

[Harshil-Jani]

Progress Tracker

• Tried baking simple new tauri app and created all the builds using GH-Actions : Pasauri
• Bundled the binaries and released them. Release
• Test the release on Ubuntu.
• Test the release on Windows.
• Test the release on MacOS.

[Harshil-Jani]

@ChakshuGautam The Android and iOS support is really hacky and keeps breaking in v2-alpha. Not sure if this would be a good time for using it for Mobiles.

Windows, MacOS, Linux - Env works fine though.

[Harshil-Jani]

Limitations

• Cannot have a single codebase for PWA and tauri app. Since there is no direct way to invoke rust functions on the Web Browser.
• Android and iOS builds are not yet stable.
• Ubuntu latest (22.04) works but sometimes it breaks so Ubuntu 20.04 is more preffered.

Advantages

• Replaces Node and using rust we get more security and access to system calls.
• Memory efficient
• Default updater allows users to pull updates directly.

[Harshil-Jani]

If we are just thinking to make the desktop applications out of tauri. Then I see no objections in our way. Because, Tauri gives more freehand on how your desktop application should look like. You can add some extra menus, Perform file handling and extra stuff which any normal application supports (Eg : Like MS Excel).

But, Tauri cannot get the server side code. You need to have an external server running. It could be anything Node, Actix, Rocket. So, If we want to transfer backend to rust then we need to have a server rewrite and use tauri for desktop building.

More on philosophy behind Tauri