electrobun-init

Electrobun Init

Scaffolds a new Electrobun desktop app from a built-in template.

Commands

electrobun init                                    # interactive template picker
electrobun init <project-name>                     # pick template interactively, name set
electrobun init <template-name>                    # template name = project name
electrobun init <project-name> --template=<name>  # explicit name + template

After init:

cd <project-name>
bun install
bun start         # runs: electrobun dev

Template Reference

Choose based on what your app primarily does:

Minimal / Learning

Template	Use when
hello-world	Starting from scratch, learning Electrobun
bunny	Demo/mascot, visual showcase

UI Framework Integration

Template	Use when
svelte	You use Svelte
vue	You use Vue
solid	You use SolidJS
angular	You use Angular
react-tailwind-vite	React + Tailwind, Vite bundler
tailwind-vanilla	No framework, just Tailwind
vanilla-vite	No framework, Vite bundler

App Patterns

Template	Use when
multi-window	App needs multiple independent windows
tray-app	Menu bar / system tray app, no main window
notes-app	CRUD app with local storage
sqlite-crud	App with a local SQLite database
photo-booth	Camera/media capture

Browser / Multi-tab

Template	Use when
multitab-browser	Multi-tab browser shell with navigation

3D / Graphics

Template	Use when
wgpu-threejs	3D scene with Three.js on native WebGPU
wgpu	Native GPU rendering with Dawn/WebGPU
wgpu-mlp	WebGPU neural net inference
wgpu-babylon	BabylonJS on WebGPU

What Gets Generated

Every template produces at minimum:

<project-name>/
├── package.json          # scripts: start, dev, build, build:canary
├── electrobun.config.ts  # app identity + build config
├── tsconfig.json
├── bun.lock
└── src/
    ├── bun/
    │   └── index.ts      # main process entry
    └── <viewname>/       # one or more renderer dirs
        ├── index.html
        ├── index.ts
        └── index.css

GPU templates (wgpu, wgpu-mlp, wgpu-babylon, wgpu-threejs) skip the renderer dirs and use GpuWindow directly.

Post-Init Checklist

1. cd <project-name> && bun install
2. Update app.name, app.identifier, app.version in electrobun.config.ts
3. Run bun start to verify the template runs
4. For GPU templates: confirm bundleWGPU: true is set per platform
5. For CEF templates: confirm bundleCEF: true is set per platform
6. Commit the scaffold before making changes

Common Issues

• "Template not found" → Run electrobun init with no args to see the interactive picker with valid names
• bun install fails → Ensure Bun ≥ 1.0. Run bun --version
• App launches but blank window → Check that the view name in electrobun.config.ts views matches the directory name in src/