The answer is yes; you can create a desktop application with tauri without knowledge of Rust. Tauri enables nextjs to build a frontend interface for the application. That is the main point, where the limitation or disadvantages starts with nextjs and tauri.
- You can not create an API with nextjs
- You can enable SSR in Nextjs with tauri
Tauri uses npm run build && npm run export commands to generate a static site. You cant use getServerSideProps in nextjs. You can only use getStaticProps in tauri. For data fetching, tauri provides an https API for that. If You enable backend service in your tauri application, then Rust is essential.
The new version of the create-tauri-app has removed the nextjs and other frontend library support like preact, preact-ts, clojurescript, svelte-kit, and svelte-kit-ts templates.
Why did tauri remove the support of the template?
Tauri's official team write a details article on it. You read on the official tauri website.
- https://tauri.app/blog/2023/03/01/create-tauri-app-version-3-released
- https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/discussions/1163
The removing the nextjs temple support with tauri. It is not the right decision according to me. The next time I work with tauri and nextjs, I will manually write configurations for nextjs in tauri without knowing if it is good or bad for the application. It lit a bit sad and hard for me to write configurations; it is the trick for every developer.