I'm building an ERP system for agriculture and fruit-and-vegetable management companies, with the intention of selling it to a specific business niche. The backend will use .NET, but I'm unsure which frontend technology and overall architecture would provide a solid foundation and minimize future rewrites.
I'm considering Electron, although I'm concerned about the slower JavaScript/CSS development experience and the size of its embedded Chromium runtime. Tauri is also an option, but it doesn't yet seem mature enough for my needs.
WinForms and WPF would be easier for me to build with, but they feel older and I'm unsure about their long-term direction. The application may also need features such as embedded maps, which could require WebView2. Would that be a reasonable approach, or should I use another desktop or cross-platform framework?
2 Answers
Before choosing a framework, decide whether this truly needs to be a desktop application. If it does, WPF with WebView2 can still be a practical .NET-focused option, especially when you need to display web-based maps. The embedded browser is not automatically a problem; it can be isolated to the parts of the application that need web content.
Expo and Flutter are worth knowing about, but they are generally aimed at mobile or cross-platform application development. They may not be the most natural fit for a Windows-oriented ERP unless mobile support is also an important requirement. For a primarily desktop product, compare WPF, a web frontend packaged as a desktop app, and other cross-platform options based on deployment and maintenance needs.
Those options seem more relevant to mobile apps, while this project is intended to have a desktop frontend.
Yes, the plan is for a desktop frontend rather than a mobile application.