egasimus / graffiti-tutorial

Graffiti development environment with Nix

Thanks to the myriad interpreted languages at our disposal, creating a terminal program on Unix can be as easy as adding the appropriate #!-line to a text file, then marking the file as executable. Now, we bring the same simplicity to building GUI apps, thanks to Graffiti, Node.js, and Nix.

Step 1. Preparation

Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/egasimus/graffiti-nix
cd graffiti-nix

Install Nix package manager:

• Get Nix for Linux or Mac.
• How to install Nix on Windows 10 with WSL
• Official NixOS OVA.

Try it out:

./01-tutorial.js

Step 2. Hello Graffiti

Graffiti lets you build beautiful GUI apps using familiar Web technologies. Unlike Electron or NW.js, Graffiti does not bundle an entire browser engine - it just gives you a lightweight DOM environment. This means it's faster and more secure, yet can still run familiar frameworks like React or Mithril.

Graffiti is a native Node.js module, written in Rust. Thanks to Nix, you don't have to manually install Node or Rust, or compile Graffiti. In a new directory, run:

touch hello-world
chmod +x hello-world

Then open hello-world with your favorite file, and paste this:

Save it, and run it.

Step 3. Adding NPM modules

Step 4. Frameworks and transpilation

Step 5. Native dependencies

Step 6. Packaging