Hi HN! I'm itome. This is my first post on HN and English is not my first language so please bear with me.
I want to share a Rust-based cross-platform app framework I've been working on.
In short, it's a Rust version of React Native. You can build iOS, Android, web, and desktop (macOS for now) apps from a single Rust codebase.
I've built many apps with Flutter and React Native over the last 10 years and think they are super nice. But they have limitations in memory usage, performance and app binary size. Some Flutter/React Native libraries solve those performance limitations by delegating processes to native code. So I came up with the idea of writing everything in native code, so you don't have to worry about those limitations.
I chose Rust for this project because I've already built some developer tools in Rust and think it's the future of programming (especially when you use it with AI).
The result is great. Whisker has good performance and a small footprint based on my early measurements. It has a human-readable render! macro and SolidJS-like fine-grained reactivity. It also has hot reloading, using a fork of Dioxus's subsecond.
Building a whole app framework is a huge amount of work. I'm using Codex and Claude Code to complete those tasks. Whisker would never have gotten this far without LLMs, but this project is not vibe coded. I decided all the APIs and the architecture.
It's in pre-alpha, so the APIs may change.
You can try it with the following commands (requires Xcode):
cargo install whisker-cli
rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios-sim
whisker new my-app && cd my-app
whisker run ios
I've already launched my personal app built with Whisker on the App Store and Google Play.
Hi HN! I'm itome. This is my first post on HN and English is not my first language so please bear with me. I want to share a Rust-based cross-platform app framework I've been working on. In short, it's a Rust version of React Native. You can build iOS, Android, web, and desktop (macOS for now) apps from a single Rust codebase.
I've built many apps with Flutter and React Native over the last 10 years and think they are super nice. But they have limitations in memory usage, performance and app binary size. Some Flutter/React Native libraries solve those performance limitations by delegating processes to native code. So I came up with the idea of writing everything in native code, so you don't have to worry about those limitations.
I chose Rust for this project because I've already built some developer tools in Rust and think it's the future of programming (especially when you use it with AI).
The result is great. Whisker has good performance and a small footprint based on my early measurements. It has a human-readable render! macro and SolidJS-like fine-grained reactivity. It also has hot reloading, using a fork of Dioxus's subsecond.
Building a whole app framework is a huge amount of work. I'm using Codex and Claude Code to complete those tasks. Whisker would never have gotten this far without LLMs, but this project is not vibe coded. I decided all the APIs and the architecture.
It's in pre-alpha, so the APIs may change. You can try it with the following commands (requires Xcode):
I've already launched my personal app built with Whisker on the App Store and Google Play.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.chanto.g...
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/giga-online-manga-reader/id676...
I'd love to get feedback and suggestions from other developers on the API and the overall developer experience.