Anubias builds apps on a Vue canvas, and ships no v2 release

The README describes v1, and master is v2

The most important line in this README is a warning at the top, and it is easy to skip. It says the document describes version 1, that the team is working on v2, and that the master branch is v2, with a link to a v1 branch for the older details. Everything below that line, the screenshots, the feature list, the download table, is v1 material. The package.json says version 2.0.0, which is the only place the current state is stated numerically. So the documentation and the code are on different versions, and the gap is not cosmetic: a v2 user has to infer the current feature set from the dependency list, and a v1 reader following the download links is installing a build from a branch the project has moved off. There is a graveyard/ directory at the repository root, which is where the previous attempt at this rewrite appears to live, and that tells you something about how the migration went.

A node canvas rather than a form, built on Vue Flow

The v2 stack is visible in package.json, and it is worth reading as a design statement. The shell is Tauri v2 with a Rust side in src-tauri/, and the interface is Vue 3.5 with Vuex 4 for state and vue-router 5 for navigation. The canvas itself is @vue-flow/core at ^1.48.2, which is a node graph library, not a form builder, and the feature list calls the editor a drag and drop component GUI. Two supporting libraries explain what a visual project needs: sortablejs and sortablejs-vue3, so components can be reordered on the canvas, and html-to-image, which turns the canvas into an image. Icons come from material-icons and remixicon, themes from vue-color-kit, and vazirmatn is the typeface, a Persian font, which fits a project run by a team with the URLs 4xmen.ir and xstack.ir. Toast notifications come from vue-toastification, still at a 2.0.0 release candidate.

Install the v1 snap, or build the v2 IDE from source

The only command the README gives is for Linux, through the Snap store, and it uses classic confinement:

snap install anubias --classic

That install path belongs to the v1 line, since the Snapcraft badge and the download links are part of the version 1 description. For v2 the documented route is source. The contribution section gives the fork and clone steps:

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/Anubias-Desktop.git

and package.json defines the scripts for the rest, where dev-ide is the one that opens the desktop IDE, running the Tauri development server through yarn:

yarn tauri dev

The plain dev script is vite on its own, which gives you the web front end in a browser without the Rust shell, and build is vite build. That split is useful: you can work on the interface without paying for a full Tauri compile, and only pay it when you need the native features the plugins provide.

The plugin list is the real feature specification

Six Tauri plugins are declared, and between them they describe what this IDE actually does to your machine. plugin-dialog and plugin-fs give it file pickers and file system access, which is how a visual editor reads a project and writes files back. plugin-store persists editor state between sessions, so your canvas is not lost on restart. plugin-global-shortcut registers system-wide key bindings, which is what a real IDE needs and a web page cannot have. plugin-positioner moves and sizes windows, and plugin-opener hands files and URLs to the system default application. Read that list as the boundary of the tool: anything you would want from a code editor that is not a file, a window, a shortcut or a link to the OS is not there. There is no terminal plugin and no debugger plugin in package.json, so this is a project generator with a canvas, not a replacement for an editor once the project exists.

xScript gets one sentence, and it is the whole language reference

A visual builder is two halves, and the other half here is called xScript, described in the feature list as code that looks like JavaScript. That is the entire documentation. There is no syntax reference, no example project, no statement of whether it compiles to Dart, to Kotlin and Swift, or to something else, and no explanation of how the script attaches to a component on the canvas. The repository topics still list flutter and electron, which is a leftover from the v1 implementation, and either name is a hint about the generated output rather than a statement about the current code. For an engineer evaluating this, that gap is the deciding fact. A drag and drop canvas that emits a working project is a legitimate product, and a canvas that emits a project plus a scripting layer with no reference is a demo, because you cannot review code you cannot read and you cannot debug a language you cannot look up. The v1 branch may hold more of the old documentation, and it is the place to check before concluding.

Four download links, all under the version 1 section

The downloads table offers Windows with a separate portable build, macOS, Linux, and a WebApp demo, each behind a link under anubias.app/dl. That spread is the pitch of the project: one tool covering mobile, desktop and web targets, and the README's feature list names Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS and web applications as the destinations. What the table does not say is which version each link serves, which is the direct consequence of the note at the top. There is no changelog in the tree to check against, no version string in the download page text, and no statement about which platforms the v2 canvas can currently export. Treat those links as the v1 line and assume nothing about v2 output targets until you have run the IDE and looked at what it generated. The project's own site is anubias.app, with the team sites 4xmen.ir and xstack.ir, and the free claim in the feature list is repeated nowhere else in the documentation.

Work continues on master, tagged releases stopped in 2022

The release history is three tags: v1.0.0-beta1 on 2021-10-22, v1.0.0 on 2022-01-28 and v1.1.0 on 2022-02-22. After that, nothing. The last push to master is 2026-09-28, so the repository is being worked on, and the version field in package.json has moved to 2.0.0 with a current dependency set built on Vite 8, Vue 3.5 and Tauri v2. That combination is the honest description of the project's state: an active rewrite with no release attached to it. For an adopter the consequence is simple. If you want the current Anubias, you clone and run yarn tauri dev, you accept that your build comes from a branch, and you accept that there is nothing to pin. If you want a tagged artefact, the newest one is more than four years old and belongs to the version the README says is superseded.

Against Flutter, React Native and writing the project by hand

The alternative approaches differ in where the work happens. Flutter and React Native are code first: you type a widget tree, you read the docs, and the compiler or bundler handles the rest. The cost is the hours before anything renders. Anubias is canvas first: you place components, configure them through the interface, and get a project on disk that you then own. The cost is the abstraction you inherit, and here the abstraction is xScript, whose documentation is one sentence. The middle option, which is what a lot of teams actually do, is to use a scaffolding tool to get the native project shell, throw the tool away, and write real code. The case for a tool like Anubias is speed on a first prototype and a low floor for someone who does not write Dart. The case against it is that a visual project is only maintainable if you can read everything it generated, and the missing language reference means you cannot make that judgement from the repository alone.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt Anubias if you want a desktop tool that produces a project skeleton for a phone app in an afternoon and you are willing to run the v2 code from source, because the tagged releases stop at 1.1.0 from 2022-02-22 while master carries the actual work, with the last push on 2026-09-28. Do not adopt it if you need a documented language, since xScript gets a single sentence in the README, or if you need a licence file you can point a legal reviewer at, because the badge says GPL v3 and the repository root has no LICENSE. Verify first that the download links under anubias.app/dl still serve the version you expect, that yarn tauri dev starts the IDE on your machine, and which of the six listed platform targets the canvas actually emits for your project.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. 4xmen/anubias on GitHub
2. Issues
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases