alt Hacker NewsI’ve been really impressed with GPUI, particularly with Longbridge’s open source component library which provides a bunch of shadcdn-alike widgets that are really well implemented and come with a bunch of tailwind-like helper functions that make layout easy.
The downside is that the dependency stack you need to do gui programming with rust is massive and the compile times are brutal. You can’t beat the application performance, though. It’s crazy how nice it feels compared to bloated electron apps.
The question of “are we gui yet” is definitely yes, at least on the desktop. The problem is that developers are too lazy to build apps with anything other than web frameworks.
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GPUI is truly awesome.
Check out: https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component
GPUI is developed alongside Zed and thus features that aren't useful for Zed are sometimes left behind.
I think there was a community fork recently that tried to tend to these concerns.
It's not a bad thing per se, but its worth mentioning.
I’ve been using GPUI in a side project of mine (TukeySheets.com) and can attest that it is quite nice and it works well on all platforms, at least in my experience. So I would say, definitely “we are gui” in rust.
The component library by long bridge is also well done and reasonably well documented.
For me it's not so much laziness, as more of a lack of desire to rely on a framework that Zed core team still feels to be not ready for a general release. Electron just happens to be the least worst way to make an aesthetically pleasing cross-platform desktop app, but the performance trade-off is a major pain point.
GPUI getting the public release greenlight will no doubt be a turning point for desktop GUI development. All it took is a small team of gifted developers to dogfood their own GUI toolkit and get some much-needed VC backing. The future looks very bright.