alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Run GUIs as Scripts
Hi there, Zero Stars here.
I recently published some new work to Hokusai Pocket, which is a cross-platform binary made on top of raylib and MRuby that runs GUIs from ruby scripts.
License?
MIT!
How does it work?
The binary is available on the GitHub releases page: https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai-pocket/releases/tag/0...
You can download the binary on x86 Windows, OSX, or Linux, and run your GUI application with
hokusai-pocket run:target="<your_hokusai_app.rb>"
For a little bit of a hello world, I started a photoshop clone
https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai_demo_paint
Also a little game
https://github.com/skinnyjames/pocket-squares
Docs / Help?
The docs are in progress, but the old docs for the CRuby version express some of the basic ideas around the project. https://hokusai.skinnyjames.net/docs/intro
(I'm also available to answer questions in between slinging pizza)
Deps?
Hokusai pocket currently uses
* libuv for offloading cpu intensive tasks to a worker pool to prevent blocking the UI thread, and I plan to integrate some libuv networking as well.
* raylib for backend graphics / I've also built with SDL on arm64 to run applications on my pinephone
* NativeFileDialog for the lovely integration into filesystem.
* MRuby for running or embedding the scripts
* tree-sitter for the custom template grammar (Although templates can be built with ruby)
Anyway, I hope you get a chance to try it. If you make something cool AND have docker installed, you can also publish your work as single binary
`hokusai-pocket publish:target=<your cool program.rb>`
Would love feedback, apps, and help with documentation and more build targets.
urs truly,
@ ᴗ @
Comments
This is potentially very interesting to me, but I'm having a hard time under exactly what it is. Could you give a little background on what motivated it, and what the core features are?
I see aot if these kinda of links to GitHub repositories with the user obviously keen on showing people, but they then describe what it is / does using specialist / domain language which can make it quite hard to get just what it is I'm looking at, or what I can do with it, and where / why it would be useful. I do wish people would consider their audience after posting 'look at this thing' links, and that people might not quite be as familiar with acronyms and domain specific terminology without a bit more of a plain speaking background description as to what is being shown off! Maybe even some screenshots too.
I mean, I can follow ops intent to a general degree, it sounds interesting, but ..