LowArc Studio

A Tauri v2 desktop IDE for LowArc, a game engine built around small, independently-loadable modules (native, process, or otherwise). LowArc Studio is where a project's modules get assembled, a project's code gets edited, and a dev build gets run and debugged: all in one self-contained app.

Status

Windows-only for now. The toolchain pin (rust-toolchain.toml) targets stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc, and a few pieces the app depends on (ConPTY for the Terminal plugin, native .dll module loading, WebView2) are Windows-specific today. Extending to other platforms would start with that pin.

Getting started

Prerequisites: a Rust toolchain (rustup will pick up the pin in rust-toolchain.toml automatically) and Windows 10/11 with WebView2 (already present on any current Windows install).

cd src-tauri
cargo run

That's the whole setup: no npm install, no separate frontend build step. The frontend (src/) is plain HTML/CSS/JS served directly by Tauri (frontendDist in tauri.conf.json, no bundler in front of it), and first launch from a fresh clone takes care of its own bookkeeping (AppPaths::ensure_directories()/ensure_builtin_plugin_binaries() in app_paths.rs): it creates modules/, plugins/'s runtime bits, themes/, and copies the two backend binaries (file_explorer_backend, terminal_backend) into their plugin folders automatically.

Running from a source checkout keeps all of that per-user state inside the repo itself (at the repo root; see .gitignore) rather than scattering it into a hidden per-user app-data folder, so a dev checkout never touches anything outside its own directory.

Testing

cd src-tauri
cargo test

Runs the full unit + integration suite, including real end-to-end tests that spawn actual subprocess/native modules and (for the export path) actually launch an exported build. No external checkout or network access needed for any of it.

cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

Clean as of this writing: CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs both this and cargo test on every push/PR. There's no rustfmt.toml yet, so cargo fmt isn't enforced: this codebase deliberately runs wider than rustfmt's 100-char default on long, well-commented single-line statements.

Building an installer

cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0.0" --locked  # once
cd src-tauri
cargo tauri build

This is the one thing plain cargo build/cargo run doesn't cover. Packaging needs the actual Tauri CLI, which drives prepare-bundle.ps1 (stages the backend binaries the bundler needs to find) before invoking the platform bundler.

Project layout

• src/ — the frontend: editor.html (the main IDE shell) plus src/editor/*.js (its script, split across files in load order), primitives.js/primitives.css (shared host-side UI components), and a handful of standalone pages (settings.html, modules.html, plugins.html, export.html) that each host their own popup/page via the same primitives.
• src-tauri/: the Rust backend. Notable modules:
  • runtime/: the actual game-engine runtime (loaders, driver, manifest resolution) embedded in the IDE for dev-run, and reused by bin/lowarc_runtime.rs for exported, standalone builds.
  • export/: stages a project into a self-contained folder for distribution.
  • plugin_host/, plugin_assets.rs, plugin_asset_server.rs, plugin_session.rs: the plugin system: process isolation, the sandboxed-iframe asset server, and long-lived plugin sessions (Terminal).
  • bin/ holds the extra binary targets built alongside the main app: lowarc_runtime (the exported runtime), native_module_host (isolates a native-kind module in its own process), file_explorer_backend/terminal_backend (the two built-in plugins with their own backends).
• plugins/: every built-in plugin, each its own folder (plugin.json + assets, optionally a built backend binary). Tracked as source by default. See .gitignore's own note on this.
• modules/, themes/, settings.json, recent.json: per-user runtime state created on first launch (see Getting Started above). Not tracked; entirely disposable.

Plugins

A plugin runs inside a fully sandboxed iframe (sandbox="allow-scripts", no allow-same-origin, no Tauri capability of its own) and can only reach the host through a small window.lowarc.* harness: everything else (file access, native dialogs, running its own backend process) is relayed through the host, which enforces per-plugin identity on every relayed action. See plugin_assets.rs's HARNESS_JS for the current API surface, and any existing plugin under plugins/ for a working example of the manifest shape (plugin.json).

Contributing

Only commits that pass cargo build, cargo test and cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings should land on main; CI enforces the same three. See CONTRIBUTING.md before you start on anything large, and SECURITY.md if you found a vulnerability rather than a bug.

Contact

• Bugs and features: open an issue.
• Questions and help: support@lowarc.com.
• Security: security@lowarc.com, or GitHub's private reporting. See SECURITY.md.
• Conduct: report@lowarc.com. See CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
• Licensing, trademark, anything legal: legal@lowarc.com.
• Anything else: info@lowarc.com.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE, and NOTICE for the third-party code LowArc Studio bundles.

The licence covers the code, not the name: Apache-2.0 grants no trademark rights (section 6), so "LowArc" and the bolt mark are not yours to use by having forked this. Ask legal@lowarc.com if you need to.