Neutralinojs is a cross-platform desktop application framework that enables building native desktop apps using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) without bundling a full browser engine. The core is a C++ binary that embeds a WebSocket server, a static file server, and a native API layer. Applications communicate with the backend via JSON-RPC over WebSocket, allowing access to OS-level features like file system, process management, clipboard, system info, and window control. The framework supports multiple deployment modes: window (native webview), browser, cloud, and chrome. The architecture is modular, with API controllers in `api/` (e.g., `app`, `fs`, `os`, `net`, `storage`, `clipboard`, `computer`) that each expose a set of methods. The server (`server/neuserver`) routes incoming WebSocket messages to the appropriate controller based on a method prefix. Authentication is handled via a token-based system (`auth/authbasic`), and permissions are enforced through allow/block lists (`auth/permission`). Extensions can be loaded as separate processes (`extensions_loader`), communicating via WebSocket with a shared token. The framework relies heavily on vendored third-party libraries: Asio for async I/O, WebSocket++ for WebSocket protocol, mbedTLS for TLS/crypto, and platform-specific libraries for hardware info, file watching, and clipboard. The build system uses CMake with platform-specific toolchains. The project includes a test suite using Mocha and a custom runner that launches the binary and executes JavaScript specs.
This repository is a comparative benchmark of web-to-desktop application frameworks (Electron, Tauri, NW.js, Wails, NodeGui, Neutralino, Flutter, .NET MAUI). It provides automated benchmarking infrastructure that builds empty apps for each framework, measures build size, build time, memory usage, and startup duration across multiple operating systems, and presents the results in formatted README tables and Mermaid graphs. The repository also tracks GitHub stars and forks over time. The codebase is primarily a data collection and presentation project, with the runner scripts orchestrating the benchmarks and generating the comparison documents. The benchmark apps themselves are minimal template applications. The project is actively maintained with recent commits and automated CI workflows, but the runner code contains several technical issues (undefined functions, deprecated patterns) indicating high technical drift. The data is bundled in the repository, making results immediately accessible without running benchmarks.