ZeroN-biu

A minimal zero-native desktop app with a web frontend with html + typescript, using https://github.com/mindon/biu based on https://bun.sh.

Requirements

• zig from https://ziglang.org/
• zero-native from https://zero-native.dev/
• bun from https://bun.sh
• biu from https://github.com/mindon/biu

Setup

zig build dev, zig build run, and zig build package install frontend dependencies automatically.

Commands

zig build dev
zig build run
zig build test
zig build package
zero-native doctor --manifest app.zon

zig build dev starts the frontend dev server from app.zon, waits for it, and launches the native shell with ZERO_NATIVE_FRONTEND_URL.

Frontend:

• Type: next
• Production assets: frontend/dist
• Dev URL: http://127.0.0.1:5118/

Web Engines

The generated app defaults to the system WebView. On macOS you can switch to Chromium/CEF with:

zero-native cef install
zig build run -Dplatform=macos -Dweb-engine=chromium

zero-native cef install downloads zero-native's prepared CEF runtime, including the native wrapper library.

For one-command local setup, opt into build-time install:

zig build run -Dplatform=macos -Dweb-engine=chromium -Dcef-auto-install=true

Use -Dcef-dir=/path/to/cef when you keep CEF outside the platform default under third_party/cef.

zero-native doctor --web-engine chromium

Diagnostics:

• Set ZERO_NATIVE_LOG_DIR to override the platform log directory during development.
• Set ZERO_NATIVE_LOG_FORMAT=text|jsonl to choose persistent log format.