Build and Run

Prerequisites

• Install the system dependencies required by Tauri v2.
• Install Rust via rustup.
• Install Node.js (LTS version) from its official website.
• Install pnpm. Deskulpt does not support other node package managers.

Make sure you are working on your own fork of the Deskulpt repository. Then install all dependencies from the pnpm workspaces:

pnpm install

Development

To develop Deskulpt, use the following command:

pnpm tauri dev

The first run might be slow because Rust needs to fetch and compile all dependencies, but subsequent runs should be significantly faster. Once Rust has finished the compilation, the application will be automatically started, and any change you make in the source code will trigger a reload or rebuild.

To debug Deskulpt frontend, you can open the web inspector to debug the Deskulpt frontend in the same way as in a browser. Simply right click the webview and click "Inspect", or use the Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Option+I (macOS) shortcut. To debug Deskulpt backend, the printouts will appear in the terminal that you ran the command.

Thanks to the Vite development server, if you are making frequent changes only to the frontend, the hot reloading is very fast without needing to rebuild the app. However if you are making frequent changes to the backend, each time you make a change, a rebuild of the backend is triggered and the whole app will restart. In such cases, you might want to separate the build and run steps to avoid frequent rebuild:

pnpm tauri build --debug --no-bundle
./target/debug/deskulpt

Build

To make a full release build, run the following command:

pnpm tauri build

Refer to its printout for the locations of the bundled artifacts. These are the final deliverables to the users. You can use them install Deskulpt and run the app as a normal user.

You can also start the app by directly running the executable, so that you can see the printouts in the terminal, but you should keep in mind that this is different from using the bundled artifacts:

./target/release/deskulpt

Note that the web inspector is not enabled in release builds. If you do need to debug the frontend, make a debug build instead:

pnpm tauri build --debug

Again, refer to its printout for the locations of the bundled artifacts, or use the following command to directly run the executable:

./target/debug/deskulpt

If you want only the executable but not the bundled artifacts, you can add the --no-bundle flag to the build command.

Widgets Directory

The widgets directory would always be under the directory of your executable. If you used the development mode or made a debug build, it will be ./target/debug/widgets/. If you made a release build, it will be ./target/release/widgets/. If you used the bundled artifacts, it will be under your installation directory.

WARNING

If you clean up the Rust artifacts e.g. using cargo clean, the widgets under the ./target/ directory will be deleted as well. Please remember to backup the widgets that you might reuse to avoid accidental loss of work.