Gregory's ServerBuild Gnome apps with Swift:
 16 comments
@Migueldeicaza Never used Swift but those bindings look fantastic. The standard GTK API leaves a lot to be desired.  @Migueldeicaza this is exciting! It's so weird that you can build Swift GNOME apps in a nice declarative UI and export as Flatpaks, but I wonder what KDE users will get -- or if we can get away with GNOME apps for "Linux", meaning all distros 😵💫 @Migueldeicaza having done some gtk-rs, I have to say this looks absolutely wonderful. @Migueldeicaza I write a lot of swift at work (well, a mix of swift, ObjC and C++) and can agree wholeheartedly, swift is lovely for app development. My personal work is mostly Rust, and it just doesn't map well to the kind of state mutation that GUI apps need. Gtk-rs is the best I've encountered, but it does so by committing horrible rust-crimes via via macro chicanery to sidestep single-mutability rules. It's the best I've seen for Rust GUI, and it's just terrible. @ShamylZakariya we are on the same page! I love rust, but for apps, it doesn’t match the joy I get out of swift. Nice to find another fellow Swifter! @ShamylZakariya @Migueldeicaza Have you ever used Slint? It resolves the problem by moving UI into @alwayscurious @Migueldeicaza I insist on using a platform’s native toolkit, so as nice as it may be, slint is out  @ShamylZakariya @Migueldeicaza Have you looked into relm4? It's built atop of gtk-rs and allows you to build GUIs elm-style. It was the first (and only) time I had fun building a GUI (although I didn't try Swift yet). @ljrk @Migueldeicaza I have! And, honestly it looks pretty fantastic. I did the basic tutorials, went through the relm4 book. But I realized that since it's an abstraction on top of gtk-rs, I would be hamstrung using it unless I had some real gtk-rs experience under my belt. If I were to make another app in rust & gtk, I'd probably go the relm4 route, but honestly, as mush as I love rust (and I really do), I think Swift is a better fit for user-facing gui application development.  |
@Migueldeicaza “Note that libadwaita works best on Linux. If you’re on a newer Mac and interested in Linux, check out Asahi Linux.” Ha! Great to see Asahi mentioned on Apple-sanctioned documentation.