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Dioxus 0.6.0Getting Started

Getting Started

Getting started with Dioxus is quick and shouldn't take more than a minute or two.

Pick an Editor

Pick your favorite editor!

We recommend using VSCode since Dioxus ships with its own VSCode extension.

Our build tool dx is standalone and works with any editor.

Install Rust-Analyzer

Dioxus integrates very well with the Rust-Analyzer LSP plugin which provides appropriate syntax highlighting, code navigation, folding, and more.

You can follow the installation instructions for your editor of choice.

Install Rust

Head over to https://rust-lang.org and install the Rust compiler.

We strongly recommend going through the official Rust book completely. However, we hope that a Dioxus app can serve as a great first Rust project.

We've put a lot of care into making Dioxus syntax familiar and easy to understand, so you won't need deep knowledge of async, lifetimes, or smart pointers until you start building complex Dioxus apps.

Install cargo-binstall

Dioxus ships prebuilt binaries for its CLI using cargo-binstall. This means you can install dx without needing to compile from source.

You can install cargo-binstall with the following command:

curl -L --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cargo-bins/cargo-binstall/main/install-from-binstall-release.sh | bash

or alternatively:

# through brew
brew install cargo-binstall

# or from source
cargo install cargo-binstall

Install the Dioxus CLI

Dioxus is comprised of two parts:

  • The dioxus crate: the core Dioxus framework
  • The dx tool: a CLI tool for building Dioxus apps

If you want to build web or mobile apps with Dioxus, or benefit from features like hot-reloading and bundling, you'll need to install the dx tool. You can download the prebuilt binary with the following command:

cargo binstall dioxus-cli

If you want to build the CLI from source, you can install it with the following command:

cargo install dioxus-cli

📣 Installing from source will take several minutes. We strongly recommend using cargo-binstall for installation.

If you get an OpenSSL error on installation, ensure the dependencies listed here are installed.

Platform-specific dependencies

Most platforms don't require any additional dependencies, but if you are targeting desktop, you can install the following dependencies.

macOS

There are no extra dependencies for macOS! However, if you want to build iOS apps, read the iOS section below.

Windows

Windows apps depend on WebView2 – a library that should be installed in all modern Windows distributions.

If you have Edge installed, then Dioxus will work fine. If you don't have WebView2, then you can install it through Microsoft. Microsoft provides 3 options:

  1. A tiny "evergreen" bootstrapper that fetches an installer from Microsoft's CDN.
  2. A tiny installer that fetches WebView2 from Microsoft's CDN.
  3. A statically linked version of WebView2 in your final binary for offline users.

We recommend using Option 1.

Linux

WebView Linux apps require WebkitGtk and xdotool. When distributing, these should be part of your dependency tree in your .rpm or .deb.

If you run into issues, make sure you have all the basics installed.

For Ubuntu, make sure everything is installed:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  build-essential \
  curl \
  wget \
  file \
  libxdo-dev \
  libssl-dev \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev

For arch:

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S --needed \
  webkit2gtk-4.1 \
  base-devel \
  curl \
  wget \
  file \
  openssl \
  appmenu-gtk-module \
  libappindicator-gtk3 \
  librsvg

For all other Linux targets, check the Tauri docs which cover the same dependencies.

WSL

While doable, it can be tricky to setup development in WSL for Dioxus desktop. Not everything has been figured out and some stuff may not work.

Here are the steps we used to get Dioxus running through WSL:

  1. Update your kernel to the latest version and update WSL to version 2.
  2. Add export DISPLAY=:0 to ~/.zshrc
  3. Install Tauri's Linux dependencies found here.
  4. For file dialogs to work, you need to install a fallback like zenity

When running Dioxus desktop on WSL, you may get warnings from libEGL. There is currently no way to silence these, but the app should still render.

iOS

Building iOS apps requires a device running macOS with XCode installed.

Download and install XCode from one of the following places:

You will need to download the iOS SDK and install some simulators.

For more details, we recommend reading the dedicated guide for iOS development.

Android

Android apps require the Android SDK and NDK to be installed. This can be a substantial amount of setup, so we recommend reading the dedicated guide for Android development.

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