jac-desktop

Jac-native desktop target for Jac: a desktop app is one jac nacompiled binary + the OS's own web engine - no Rust toolchain, no PyInstaller, no separate process.

What you get

• A desktop build target registered with jac-client's target registry, so jac build --client desktop and jac start --client desktop work once this package is installed.
• The build pipeline:
  1. builds your cl codespace with the standard Vite pipeline (via WebTarget),
  2. compiles a native host (na) that embeds CPython to serve that bundle on a loopback port and renders it in the OS-native webview (WebKitGTK on Linux / WKWebView on macOS / WebView2 on Windows),
  3. produces a single self-contained binary under .jac/client/desktop/.

The native webview binding + build tooling live under jac_desktop/native/webview/ (see its README for the phase-by-phase design and the dependency-free test suite).

Install

pip install jac-client jac-desktop

Building a desktop app needs the OS web engine + a C toolchain so the native host can link libwebview.so (built on first use). On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo ./jac_desktop/native/webview/install_webkit_deps.sh
# (build-essential, pkg-config, libgtk-3-dev, libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev)

Project flow

jac create --use fullstack my-app      # or any project with a cl codespace
cd my-app
jac build --client desktop             # -> .jac/client/desktop/<app>  (single binary)
jac start --client desktop             # build + launch the native window

Window geometry + app identity come from [plugins.desktop] in jac.toml:

[plugins.desktop]
name = "my-app"

[plugins.desktop.window]
title = "My App"
width = 1000
height = 700

Status

jac build --client desktop produces a working, self-contained native desktop binary that renders your cl UI. The host embeds CPython (it serves the bundle and is where sv runs in-process). Remaining: wiring the sv codespace/walkers onto the embedded interpreter, HMR dev mode, and per-OS packaging/signing - see issue #6436.