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Desktop: Environment Setup

The cross-platform desktop app in apps/desktop is a Tauri 2 application: a React 19 + Vite frontend bundled with a Rust backend, storing data locally in SQLite. One codebase produces Windows, macOS and Linux installers. Maturity: Ready.

Tauri compiles native code against the host, so it needs two kinds of prerequisites: the Rust toolchain, and each operating system's native build tools — MSVC and WebView2 on Windows, the Xcode command line tools on macOS, and the GTK/WebKitGTK libraries on Linux. mars init installs Rust when desktop is enabled; the OS-level libraries and WebView are system packages a version manager cannot install, so the two steps below cover them.

Step 1 — Install the Rust toolchain (1.77.0 or newer)​

The supported route is mise, which installs rustup underneath and drives it — the same line mars init runs. Install mise and activate its shell hook:

brew install mise            # macOS with Homebrew
# or, on macOS or Linux without Homebrew:
curl https://mise.run | sh

echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate zsh)"'  >> ~/.zshrc
echo '~/.local/bin/mise activate fish | source'  >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Pin Rust, then open a new terminal:

mise use --global rust

mise doctor reports whether the shell hook is live. Without mise, install rustup directly — never a distro rustc, which answers command -v rustc while being too old for Tauri 2:

# Windows (PowerShell): winget install --id Rustlang.Rustup -e
# macOS / Linux:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Step 2 — Install the system libraries and WebView​

Install these per operating system regardless of how Rust itself was installed. On Windows, the MSVC workload matters more than the Build Tools package: installing the package without selecting the "Desktop development with C++" workload leaves no compiler, and cargo build then fails on a missing link.exe.

On macOS, install the Xcode command line tools (they also provide a usable git):

xcode-select --install

On Linux, install WebKitGTK and its companion libraries through your distro's package manager. The package set varies by distribution:

# Debian / Ubuntu (apt)
apt-get install -y libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file \
  libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev

# Fedora / RHEL (dnf)
dnf install -y webkit2gtk4.1-devel openssl-devel curl wget file \
  libappindicator-gtk3-devel librsvg2-devel
dnf group install -y "C Development Tools and Libraries"

# Arch (pacman)
pacman -S --noconfirm webkit2gtk-4.1 base-devel curl wget file openssl \
  appmenu-gtk-module libappindicator-gtk3 librsvg

The WebKitGTK package is 4.1 on current releases and 4.0 on older ones — check with your package manager rather than guessing a name.

Next​

With Rust and the native libraries in place, continue to Develop.