ECP-0097: Tauri Desktop Bundle Boot via Relative Assets and Custom Protocol

Status: Proposed

Decision

Make the Tauri desktop frontend boot from bundled assets reliably by:

building the Tauri UI with relative Trunk asset URLs
exposing the standard custom-protocol cargo feature so direct Cargo runs can load bundled assets instead of the dev server URL
showing a minimal boot-status overlay until the Dioxus app mounts, so startup failures are no longer silent blank windows

Motivation

The desktop shell was starting as a blank window even though the frontend bundle itself rendered correctly over HTTP. Two separate issues caused that failure mode:

the Trunk bundle used root-absolute asset paths, which are fragile for desktop asset loading
cargo run without the Tauri custom-protocol feature followed the dev-server path instead of the bundled dist/ assets

This made local desktop verification ambiguous and hid useful error information from operators.

Scope

In scope:

Tauri UI bundling for desktop
direct Cargo run behavior for the desktop app
a minimal visible frontend boot diagnostic

Out of scope:

redesigning the viewer UI
changing the web deployment path for non-Tauri surfaces
full developer tooling around webview devtools

Alternatives Considered

Keep root-absolute Trunk paths and require cargo tauri dev only. Rejected because desktop bundle verification remains fragile and blank-window failures remain opaque.
Add only the boot overlay. Rejected because diagnostics help, but the bundle/load path still needs correction.

Rollout / Reversibility

The change is local to the Tauri desktop app.
Roll back by restoring the prior Trunk public URL and removing the package feature / boot overlay.

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