Shine

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! IMPORTANT: Windows only now. WIP

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Build compact, high-performance, and secure desktop applications using a web frontend — powered by modern C++20.

Shine is inspired by Tauri: you build your UI with modern web tooling (Vite/React/etc.), while the native side stays lightweight, secure, and focused on OS integration.

What’s inside

• core/: the Shine runtime (window + WebView + IPC router)
• components/: optional native components (example: filesystem)
• create-shine-app/: project scaffolding tool (npx create-shine-app@latest)

Quick start (recommended)

Create a new app:

npx create-shine-app@latest

Then:

cd my-shine-app
npm install

Dev mode (Vite)

Run the frontend dev server:

npm run dev

Build & run the native target from your IDE (CLion / Visual Studio) or via CMake.

In Debug, Shine navigates to http://localhost:5173.

Production build (in-memory assets)

Build everything (frontend + native):

npm run build

In Release, Shine loads your UI from http://shine.app/* and serves index.html, JS, CSS, images directly from bytes embedded into the native binary (no runtime unpacking to disk).

How it works (Tauri-like flow)

flowchart TD
  vite[ViteDevServer] -->|dev| webview[WebView2]
  embed[EmbedDistToCppHeader] --> native[NativeBinary]
  native -->|prod| webview
  webview -->|IPC JSON| router[IpcRouter]
  router --> components[NativeComponents]

Loading

• Dev: web assets are served by Vite.
• Prod: web assets are compiled into a generated C++ header and served from memory by the WebView resource interceptor.
• IPC: the frontend calls window.chrome.webview.postMessage(...); the native side routes commands via an allowlist (shine.conf.json).

Scaffolding: create-shine-app

The generator creates:

• frontend/ (Vite + React)
• shine/ (vendored Shine sources)
• a native CMake target linked against shine_core and shine_components
• npm scripts for build orchestration

Status

This project is under active development. APIs and project layout may change.