Tauri 2.0 moves core functionality to plugins

Tauri 2.0, a Rust-based development framework for building cross-platform desktop and mobile platforms, has reached the release candidate stage. The update migrates most of the core functionality of Tauri 1.x to plugins, the project announced.

Moving core functionality to plugins allows the Tauri developers to iterate on these independent of the core and lowers the barrier for first contributors on functionality. Some functionality is kept inside Tauri as pseudo plugins.  

Qualified plugins need to implement the Plugin Trait. All plugins starting with core: or the plugin name core now are considered core pseudo plugins and only will be initialized if they are in the Tauri code base.

Announced August 1, the Tauri 2.0 release candidate has followed more than a year and a half of beta versions and more than a year of alpha releases. The project said the long alpha and beta states happened in part because Tauri 2.0 was overpromised as having “mobile as a first-class citizen.” The project’s developers found they can only build the foundation for mobile on their own and need to iterate on this together with the community and Tauri adopters. There are still mobile plugins in Tauri’s official repository; apps have been built for Android and iOS via Tauri.

Tauri provides a framework for building desktop applications in Rust that have a small footprint—a smaller than apps built with the Electron framework. With Tauri, developers can integrate any front end framework that compiles to HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for building user experiences while using languages such as Rust, Kotliin, and Swift for the back-end logic.

The stable version of Tauri 2.0 is due later this month. Tauri 2.0 follows Tauri 1.7.0 from July 1, which featured improved shell API performance and a custom Windows codesign script. Also in Tauri 2.0, the Tauri CLI can connect to the built-in development server running on localhost when targeting Android or iOS. Previously, this only was possible when developing a desktop application. Developers no longer need to expose their development server on a public network.

Tauri 2.0 also changes Rust API exposure, following a security concern pertaining to API access control. This affects only consumers of the Rust API and should have no breaking change impact for Tauri developers. Finally, the developers of Tauri said that after the release candidate, users could expect clearer and more comprehensive documentation and fewer critical bugs that prevent productive usage.