84 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
84 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: State of Rust GUIs
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date: 2022-03-17
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---
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> This post is day 2 of me taking part in the
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> [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/) challenge.
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The website [Are we GUI Yet?](https://www.areweguiyet.com/) helpfully lists a
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lot of the libraries and frameworks available for making a GUI in Rust. I've
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been looking into making a GUI program in Rust, so I've been working my way
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through some of these options.
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This is not a through review, just my thoughts after a brief look. I'd recommend
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looking over the website and deciding for yourself.
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## Best candidate: Dioxus
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- Website: https://dioxuslabs.com/
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Dioxus is probably the option I like the best from a quick look. Declarative
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applications similar to React, encapsulated components, first class async
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support, and good type checking.
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Downsides? Right now it's web only. Desktop applications are just web
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applications rendered inside a web view. That's okay for cross platform apps,
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but not for what I want to do which is a lightweight native application.
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## Better Electron: Tauri
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- Website: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri
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Tauri is a really good replacement for Electron. You can see the comparison on
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their Github page, smaller binaries, less memory use, and faster launch times.
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But again, it is a web app running in a web view. Not a native desktop app. Even
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though Tauri uses less memory than electron, it still uses ~180 MB according to
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their comparison. And the fast launch time is still around 0.4 seconds, way
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longer than what I would expect.
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## My current preference: Slint
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- Website: https://slint-ui.com/
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I really like Slint. It is a native GUI with their own OpenGL renderer, and an
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optional Qt backend. From some basic experimentation, it seems to launch in less
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than 50ms, and uses less than 80 MB of memory (mostly shared libraries).
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You can write the code in either `.slint` files (and they actually have okay
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editor support for this file type), or inside macros in your code files. The
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code also looks pretty intuitive.
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The downsides? The theming support is not great/nonexistent, you can't
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dynamically generate UI elements (well kinda, you can generate them based on
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properties you change at runtime, but the components themselves are hardcoded),
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and the code sometimes gets awkward due to current limitations.
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```rust
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MainWindow := Window {
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// You then have to bind to this callback inside rust code. No way to just write a hook that calls a rust function.
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callback save_to_file(string);
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HorizontalLayout {
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height: 32px;
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FilePath := LineEdit {
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placeholder_text: "placeholder here";
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}
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Button {
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text: "Save to file";
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clicked => { save_to_file(FilePath.text); }
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}
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}
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}
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```
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There is also no way to do some things, like setting a dialog hint for your main
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window, which is something I needed to do.
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## Conclusion?
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It looks like the state of GUIs in rust is still "not yet". There are a few more
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projects I need to look at, like [Relm](https://github.com/antoyo/relm), but
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their code looks way too verbose to me. In the end, I think the best option
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might be to just write my GUI in C++ with Qt, and maybe integrate bits written
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in rust inside of that.
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