Northwestern PC Support File Distribution GUI

A desktop GUI app built on Tauri to distribute files across Northwestern University's engineering lab machines

Details

This was a project for my workstudy to simplify the process of replicating files across the university's engineering lab network.

It was very monotonous and time-consuming to manually copy and paste files across multiple labs.

For a while, a batch script was used to automate the process.

However, it was not very user-friendly for people that aren't tech-savvy and it was easy to make mistakes (e.g., typing file paths).

Thus, the goal of this GUI is to solve these problems by being:

• Robust enough to handle daily use for a variety of tasks without needing tweaking.
• Friendly to users that might not be fully tech literate.
• Easier to use than a similar batch script (make it harder for user to mess up).
• Faster than manually copy and pasting files.

The project was originally built on Electron (see here) but after realizing how bloated the app was, I made the decision to migrate to Tauri.

After doing so, the app performed better in every relevant metric and it was also a good opportunity for me to practice some Rust.

Features

To accomplish the listed goals (and more), the GUI supports the following features:

• Copying to multiple labs at once.
• Selecting specific systems in each lab to target.
• Logging of successful and failed operations.
• Both file and folder operations.
• Runs from a single executable that can be stored on a flash drive.
• Small (storage), lightweight (memory), and fast.

How to get it

All the code, as well as installation and use guides, can be found here for users and future maintainers.