6.3 KiB
| sidebar_label | title |
|---|---|
| Getting started | Getting started |
NodeGui enables you to create desktop applications with JavaScript. You could see it as a lightly modified variant of the Node.js runtime that is focused on desktop applications instead of web servers.
NodeGui is also an efficient JavaScript binding to a cross platform graphical user interface
(GUI) library Qt. Qt is one of the most mature and efficient library for building desktop applications.
This enabled NodeGui to be extremely memory and CPU efficient as compared to other popular Javascript Desktop GUI solutions. A hello world app built with NodeGui runs on less than 20Mb of memory.
Developer environment
To turn your operating system into an environment capable of building desktop apps with NodeGui, you would need Node.js, npm,a code editor of your choice, and a rudimentary understanding of your operating system's command line client.
Along with these, there are a few operating system dependent instructions that are listed below.
Setting up on macOS
Requirements:
- NodeGui supports macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) and up. NodeGui currently only supports 64bit OS.
- CMake 3.1 and up (Installation instructions can be found here: https://cmake.org/install/)
- Make, GCC v7
- Currently supported Node.Js versions are 14.x.
We strongly suggest you use some kind of version manager for Node.Js. This would allow you to switch to any version of nodejs quite easily. We recommend nvm: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
Confirm that both node and npm are available by running:
# This command should print the version of Node.js
node -v
# This command should print the version of npm
npm -v
If both commands printed a version number, you are all set! Before you get started, you might want to install a code editor suited for JavaScript development.
Only for M1 Macs
Setting up Qt:
You will need to download and install Qt from source since there are no binaries from Qt for M1 yet.
git clone git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git
cd qt5
git checkout 5.15
./init-repository --module-subset=essential -f
git submodule init qtsvg
git submodule update qtsvg
cd ..
mkdir qt5-5.15-macOS-release
cd qt5-5.15-macOS-release
../qt5/configure -release QMAKE_APPLE_DEVICE_ARCHS=arm64 -opensource -confirm-license -nomake examples -nomake tests -skip qt3d -skip webengine -skip qtactiveqt -skip qtcanvas3d -skip qtdeclarative -skip qtdatavis3d -skip qtdoc -skip qtgamepad -skip qtcharts -skip qtgraphicaleffects -skip qtlocation -skip qtpurchasing -skip qtquickcontrols -skip qtquickcontrols2 -skip qtremoteobjects -skip qtscxml -skip qtsensors -skip qtserialbus -skip qtserialport -skip qtspeech -skip qtvirtualkeyboard -skip qtscript
make -j15
make install
This should install Qt into something like this /usr/local/Qt-5.15.3 (your directory can change. This will be displayed when running make)
Now just set export QT_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/Qt-5.15.3 in either your .zshrc or .bashrc
Further steps would now use this custom Qt installation.
Setting up on Windows
NodeGui supports Windows 7 and later versions – attempting to develop NodeGui applications on earlier versions of Windows might not work. NodeGui currently only supports 64bit OS.
Requirements:
- Visual studio 2017 and up.
- CMake 3.1 and up (Installation instructions can be found here: https://cmake.org/install/)
- Currently supported Node.Js versions are 12.x and up.
We strongly suggest you use some kind of version manager for Node.Js. This would allow you to switch to any version of nodejs quite easily.
We strongly recommend Powershell as preferred terminal in Windows.
Confirm that both node and npm are available by running:
# This command should print the version of Node.js
node -v
# This command should print the version of npm
npm -v
If both commands printed a version number, you are all set! Before you get started, you might want to install a code editor suited for JavaScript development.
Setting up on Linux
NodeGui currently supports Ubuntu 16.04 and Debian 10 and up. Although other Linux distributions can also be easily supported. NodeGui currently only supports 64bit OS.
Requirements:
- Make, GCC v7
- CMake 3.1 and up (Installation instructions can be found here: https://cmake.org/install/)
- Currently supported Node.Js versions are 12.x and up.
- On Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros it is advisable to run
sudo apt-get update, followed bysudo apt-get install pkg-config build-essential mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev
We strongly suggest you use some kind of version manager for Node.Js. This would allow you to switch to any version of nodejs quite easily. We recommend nvm: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
Confirm that both node and npm are available by running:
# This command should print the version of Node.js
node -v
# This command should print the version of npm
npm -v
If both commands printed a version number, you are all set! Before you get started, you might want to install a code editor suited for JavaScript development.
A Good Editor
We might suggest two free popular editors: GitHub's Atom and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. Both of them have excellent JavaScript support.
If you are one of the many developers with a strong preference, know that virtually all code editors and IDEs these days support JavaScript.
Hello World
Clone and run the code in this tutorial by using the
nodegui/nodegui-starter repository.
Note: Running this requires Git and npm.
git clone https://github.com/nodegui/nodegui-starter
cd nodegui-starter
npm install
npm start
Note: If you encounter errors installing nodegui, please check the FAQs for additional help.
That's it!
Congratulations! You've successfully run and modified your first NodeGui app.
Now what?
If you're curious to learn more about NodeGui, continue on to the tutorial.