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Electron
Electron is a cross-platform (Linux, Windows, macOS) way for creating desktop apps using TypeScript.
Electron embeds Chromium and Node.js in the generated app's binary. The generated app thus consists of two separate processes - the main process, and a renderer process.
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The main process is runs the embedded node. This process can deal with the host OS - it is conceptually like a
node
repl running on your machine. In our case, the TypeScript code (in thesrc/
directory) gets transpiled bytsc
into JavaScript in thebuild/app/
directory, which gets bundled in the generated app's binary and is loaded by the node (main) process when the app starts. -
The renderer process is a regular web app that gets loaded into the embedded Chromium. When the main process starts, it creates a new "window" that shows this embedded Chromium. In our case, we build and bundle a static export of the Photos web app in the generated app. This gets loaded by the embedded Chromium at runtime, acting as the app's UI.