Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonpalmisc | Hacker News Reader

A solid, production-grade GUI library would complete Rust for me.

I reach for C++ and Qt when I want a cross-platform GUI and a low-level, compiled language. If Rust offered something on the same, or at least close, to Qt, I’d go all-in on Rust.

View on HN

Same here on all points. I am familiar w/ existing options to create Qt bindings in Rust, yet like other non-Qt-backed bindings (i.e. not PySide), they fall into disrepair or suffer on often needed features such as inheritance and slots.

I am kinda hoping autocxx[0] reaches the level of being able to handle wxWidgets headers (I have no hope for Qt though there are multiple Rust projects that try) and that will probably be enough for me on the desktop. Alternatively, it'd be nice to see a project that manually built Qt widget bindings surfacing an idiomatic Rust interface (kinda like what NodeGui does), but it's a lot of manual work that will have limited coverage in early stages instead of just continually improving/tweaking a generator.

0 - https://github.com/google/autocxx

I hope that wxWidgets for Rust never sees the light of the day.

Doesn't wxWidgets have C-based bindings anyway, that Rust could use? How do they handle non-C++-based languages with existing support?

I am only familiar w/ wxc which wxHaskell used[0], but I do not know if they are still maintained. Granted after your sibling commenter mentioned concerns w/ wxWidgets, I may have research to do on concerns with using it in 2020 (e.g. reading the references of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WxWidgets#Criticism).

0 - https://github.com/wxHaskell/wxHaskell/tree/master/wxc

Why not cooperate with the Qt people? I've experimented with some minor Hello World stuff in Qt several times over the years, but it's the C++ that tends to put me off. Some official bindings or deeper integration might draw people to both rust and Qt.

Do you just want the GUI portions of Qt or all the extra stuff that's also included?

I always found that Qt programs end up as their own little dialect of C++ that doesn't quite play by the same rules.

I think this is by design. For example, in Qt you use QStrings instead of standard library strings which then allows you to use the Qt system for internationalizing text. C++ is a general purpose language and Qt is a library/framework for building highly portable applications.

Qt bindings for Rust released under a MIT or LGPL type license would be great.

Why do you use buggy C++ and proprietary Qt when there is superior alternative called Free Pascal + Lazarus? It produces cross-platform GUI (Windows, Linux, Mac) using native GUI control (QT does not). Pascal is also readable and Pascal programs are not full of exploits like C++ software.

I actually loved Delphi back in the day for Windows development. It was quick and easy. My biggest issue with FPC/Lazarus is that the technology isn’t popular compared to C++. In my experience, the library ecosystem, etc. just isn’t as large and it’s harder to find support for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com