Allow to choose ONNX Runtime in Electron App

[AdamStrojek]

Feature request

It would be great to have the possibility to choose what ONNX Runtime is being used in Electron apps. Currently, the library is detecting Electron apps as Node.js. This generates a situation where the frontend of the application tries to use ORT for Node, which is CPU-only. It would be great to select which ORT would be used in case when detection fails.

In theory there is Electron example in repository, by it was built against 2.6 version
https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.js/blob/main/examples/electron/package.json#L18

Motivation

Giving possibility to change which ORT is used by, for example, an env variable, enables the possibility for the developer to decide which runtime is more suitable for the current situation when auto detection fails. This would allow the use of a more efficient method of calculations for models, for example, using WebGPU in the frontend of the application when still having access to fs and path modules and loading models directly from disk.

Your contribution

Unfortunately, my knowledge is limited to offer a whole PR, but I should be able to help in testing the solution and providing feedback and an example of how to use it. I already did initial changes on my own; unfortunately, I am still in the same spot where my Electron is not running correctly due to mixing Node and Web capabilities.

[BritishWerewolf]

This is likely because the IS_NODE_ENV variable gets set when creating an Electron app. See here.

I wonder whether creating a variable that checks for hybrid apps like Electron and Tauri could be a good idea.
Figuring out a good way of determining these types of apps is tricky though, but below would be a start.

// src/env.js
const IS_ELECTRON_ENV = typeof process !== 'undefined' && process.versions?.electron;

// src/backends/onnx.js
// ...
} else if (apis.IS_NODE_ENV && !apis.IS_ELECTRON_ENV) {
// ...

[AdamStrojek]

Yes, this is exact reason why I had trouble using it in renderer part of my application. But I think this problem is much more complex. I tried to fork library and disable Node detection in code, but it resulted in problems with ONNX, which also have very similar detection mechanism. This is very unfortunate, because Electron Apps can use all thing available in Chromium when executed in Renderer part.

My proposition would be to try to auto detect which version is used, but still have advanced mode for people who know what they are doing.

[AdamStrojek]

#1231