Let’s extend Go’s use case beyond cloud-based and command-line applications. With the help of Electron, Go can be extended to write graphical powered desktop application while having the power of all your CPU cores in the background (in contrast to Node.js). While most of us have experience in writing HTML/JS/CSS this sounds like the perfect fit for “web-loving” developers. In this talk I give you an introduction on how to create GUI applications with Electron as a UI Layer and build, ready to ship, executables for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

1. Adding a GUI to Go
Matthias Nösner
Software Engineer
@benchkram.de
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2. Electron
● NodeJs Framework
● Controls Chromium
● Bundles to installable application
=> Write Desktop Apps using Web Technology
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3. Apps Based On Electron
● Visual Studio Code
● Atom
● Slack
● Microsoft Teams
● Postman
● etc..
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4. 4

5. 5

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7. Where Does This Come From?
● Increased memory footprint
● Increased application size
● Increased CPU usage
(solved)
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8. Electron Process Model
Electron Main Process
nodejs
Electron Render Process
BrowserWindow
nodejs / js
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9. Chromium
Multi-Process
Architecture
https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/multi-process-architecture
● Main Process ~ 130MB RAM
● Render Process ~ min. 40MB RAM
● Memory usage of your application
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10. Where Does This Come From?
● Increased memory footprint (~170Mb)
● Application size
(~130Mb)
● CPU Usage
(solved)
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11. Considerations When Using Electron
Development Speed
vs.
Application Size and Memory Footprint
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12. Gotron
https://github.com/Equanox/gotron
● Go Api for Electron.
● Gives you control of BrowserWindows
behaviour through Go ⇔ NodeJS bridge
● Websocket to share state with UI
● Bundles executables using gotron-
builder
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13. Live Coding
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14. Future Improvements
● Full Electron API coverage
● Type/Msg Exporter Go => JS/Typescript
● IPC with Render Process
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15. Matthias Nösner
@matnosner
github.com/Equanox
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