bare-webview

A webview native-addon for the JavaScript runtime Bare.

⚠️ Warning: work in progress! ⚠️

These are the gentle beginnings of Bare bindings for the C library webview for creating webviews on macos, linux, and windows.

Using bare-webview right now requires participating in its development. I'd be happy for the help!

Current status

Here's a demonstration of what works so far:

const Worker = require('bare-worker')
const addon = require('.')

// We run the webview in the main thread
if (Worker.isMainThread) {
    const webview = addon.create()
    const worker = new Worker(__filename, {
        workerData: { webview },
    })

    worker.on('message', console.log)

    worker.on('exit', (code) => {
        console.log('Worker exited with code', code)

        // Destroy must be called from the main thread
        addon.destroy(webview)
    })

    addon.set_title(webview, 'hiiiiii')
    addon.set_size(webview, 200, 200, 0)
    addon.set_html(webview, 'hi!')

    // Run takes over the main loop.
    // In this example we're using a worker to handle
    // anything that needs to happen other than running the webview,
    // including telling the webview to shut down.
    addon.run(webview)
} else {
    // We do other stuff in the worker.
    // In this demo all we're doing is telling the
    // webview we're ready for it to shut down.
    const webview = Worker.workerData.webview

    setTimeout(() => {
        // Terminate can be called from the worker thread
        addon.terminate(webview)

        // Shut down the worker
        Worker.parentPort.exit()
    }, 2000)
}

Building

https://github.com/holepunchto/bare-make is used for compiling the native bindings in binding.c. Start by installing the tool globally:

npm i -g bare-make

Next, generate the build system for compiling the bindings, optionally setting the --debug flag to enable debug symbols and assertions:

bare-make generate [--debug]

This only has to be run once per repository checkout. When updating bare-make or your compiler toolchain it might also be necessary to regenerate the build system. To do so, run the command again with the --no-cache flag set to disregard the existing build system cache:

bare-make generate [--debug] --no-cache

With a build system generated, the bindings can be compiled:

bare-make build

This will compile the bindings and output the resulting shared library module to the build/ directory. To install it into the prebuilds/ directory where the Bare addon resolution algorithm expects to find it, do:

bare-make install

To make iteration faster during development, the shared library module can also be linked into the prebuilds/ directory rather than copied. To do so, set the --link flag:

bare-make install --link

Prior to publishing the module, make sure that no links exist within the prebuilds/ directory as these will not be included in the resulting package archive.

Publishing

To publish an addon, make sure to first compile bindings for the targets you wish to support. The prebuild workflow defined in .github/workflows/prebuild.yml automates this process for all tier 1 targets supported by Bare. The whole process can be handily orchestrated by the GitHub CLI. As the package version is part of the compiled bindings, make sure to first commit and push a version update:

npm version <increment>
git push
git push --tags

To start the prebuild workflow for the newly pushed version, do:

gh workflow run prebuild --ref <version>

To watch the status of the workflow run until it finishes, do:

gh run watch

When finished, the resulting prebuilds can be downloaded to the prebuilds/ directory by doing:

gh run download --name prebuilds --dir prebuilds

License

Apache-2.0