Possible to use this directly instead of Photino.NET?

[R-Bower]

We have a use case internally that calls for eliminating the C# layer of Photino.NET and using C++ directly. Is it possible to use this native module to create and package applications without a need for the .NET dependency?

[philippjbauer]

Generally yes. But it depends somewhat on how you want to use it and what your use case is. Would you mind elaborating a little bit more?

[R-Bower]

We're looking to implement an Electron-like application using Angular or React. We want to avoid Electron due to its bloat, and Photino looks like an excellent alternative. The issue is that we need to package it up with our C++ backend. We have C++ developers that want to avoid C# completely.

Requirements:

• The application consists of a C++ API that can invoke OS-specific libraries and dlls.
• The frontend would need to be able to send messages to and receive messages from this backend.
• The application would need to be packable into an executable for installation on target machines.

[MikeYeager]

@R-Bower You can absolutely use Photino.Native from any language that can run and interact with a C++ executable. Photino.NET is just a .NET wrapper around Protino.Native to make it easy for .NET developers to use it. .NET is not required to run Photino.Native. The only issue I see is that it can be difficult to run Angular and React apps from the file system. This is mainly due to CORS issues and JS module loading. We recommend running a local web server to accomplish this. We use ASP.NET Core in our samples because we're already loading and running .NET, so there isn't really a penalty. You would need to run a web server compatible with C++ to accomplish this. We would love to see someone create a Photino.CPP project.