Rust bindings to libui-ng.
Add the libui-ng-sys crate from crates.io to your Cargo.toml:
toml
[dependencies]
libui-ng-sys = "0.6"
When built, the libui-ng-sys build script emits linker flags to the compiler that link libui-ng to your build product, whether that be an executable or another library.
always-build FeatureBy default, libui-ng-sys searches for an existing installation of libui-ng to link dynamically with. If libui-ng is not installed, it is built from source and linked statically. This behavior can be modified with the always-build feature, which always builds libui-ng from source:
toml
[dependencies.libui-ng-sys]
features = ["always-build"]
By default, libui-ng-sys vendors the Ninja build system, builds Ninja, and then uses Ninja to build libui-ng. If you prefer a different build system, libui-ng-sys offers support for MSVC and Xcode under the build-with-msvc and build-with-xcode features, respectively. You can enable them in Cargo.toml like this:
toml
[dependencies.libui-ng-sys]
features = ["build-with-msvc"] # Or "build-with-xcode"!
If libui-ng is to be built from source, the host environment must provide a working C compiler, linker, and Python installation (≥ v3.4) at a minimum.
Additional per-platform build requirements are listed in the below sections.
GTK3 (≥ v3.10.0) is required. GTK4 is not currently supported.
GTK can be installed on APT-based systems with this command:
shell
apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
A Windows 10 or 11 SDK is required.
SDKs may be acquired from the Visual Studio Installer.
If building libui-ng from source, all compiler components must be accessible from your $PATH. The easiest way to do this is to build libui-ng-sys from a Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell. If libui-ng-sys suspects that some compiler components are missing, it will issue a warning to use a developer shell.
But, be careful to open the correct developer shell! On 64-bit Windows, the one containing "x64" is what you want. It might look like this:
x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
If libui-ng-sys is compiled with the wrong toolchain, libui-ng will fail to link, and you will receive cryptic linker errors like these:
text
basic.basic.6dc1d4cc-cgu.0.rcgu.o : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol uiInit referenced in function _ZN5basic4main17h947588e76d3f9c99E
libui-ng-sys vendors libui-ng, Meson, and Ninja as Git submodules. The latest commit hashes of these submodules are documented below for each release of libui-ng-sys.
| Dependency | Commit Hash |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| libui-ng | 42641e3d6bfb2c49ca4cc3b03d8ae277d9841a5d |
| Meson | 09ad4e28f1a59ab3d87de6f36540a108e836cfe5 |
| Ninja | 25cdbae0ee1270a5c8dd6ba67696e29ad8076919 |
| Dependency | Commit Hash |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| libui-ng | 42641e3d6bfb2c49ca4cc3b03d8ae277d9841a5d |
libui-ng-sys, and its sister crate boing, are the -ng analogues to @NoraCodes' libui-rs, which predated these crates by at least two years. Though it shares no common code with libui-ng-sys or boing and was developed separately, libui-rs was nonetheless inspiration for these crates, and I recommend checking out libui-rs as well as Nora's other work.
I should also thank @cody271 and @szanni for their help and contributions to libui-ng.