At Tauri we originally built our CLI with typescript and node.js, but we've been looking into alternatives for a while. In that vein, we just POC'd building a Tauri app with Deno (instead of node.js)

We won't explain how to install the toolchains (deno, rust and tauri), and expect you to have already built your first Tauri apps already. But if you are new to all of this, here are the details:

• https://tauri.studio/docs/getting-started/intro/
• https://deno.land

Rig and build!

git clone git@github.com:tauri-apps/tauri
cd tauri/cli
git clone git@github.com:lucasfernog/tauri-deno-cli deno
cd ../tauri/examples/communication
deno run --unstable --allow-read --allow-run --allow-net --allow-env --allow-write ../../../cli/deno/index.ts build

Benchmarking

The second time you run deno build, you'll have all the deps already installed and the rust crates as well, so let's see how long it takes on MacOS (this isn't a scientific bench):

deno

command

$ time deno run --unstable --allow-read --allow-run --allow-net --allow-env --allow-write ../../../cli/deno/index.ts build

with antibloat

real    1m2.738s

  user    0m42.514s

  sys     0m2.933s

no antibloat

real    0m25.001s

  user    0m16.473s

  sys     0m1.758s

no antibloat, just .app

real    0m5.906s

user    0m11.780s

sys     0m1.268s

node.js

command

$ time node ../../../cli/tauri.js/bin/tauri build

with antibloat

real    1m10.295s

  user    0m51.990s

  sys     0m3.009s

no antibloat

real    0m44.562s

  user    1m5.383s

  sys     0m3.187s

no antibloat, just .app

real    0m26.423s

user    0m59.936s

sys     0m2.805s

Discussion

The ~1 minute build time might seem like it takes a long time, but we are actually using these antibloat techniques only possible when single-threading.

Also, if you are trying this in your own project, you should know that you will have to run yarn tauri dev at least once in order to create index.tauri.html. We haven't started porting the inliner to deno.

Nevertheless, deno performs better in both cases - without antibloat almost twice as fast, and just building a .app its about 4.5x faster. So I absolutely have to agree with Lucas' sentiment:

deno is f!cking amazing