libui-ng-sys

Rust bindings to libui-ng.

Usage

Add the libui-ng-sys crate from crates.io to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
libui-ng-sys = "0.7"

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.

The probe-system-libui Feature

By 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 by disabling the probe-system-libui feature, which causes libui-ng to always be built from source:

[dependencies.libui-ng-sys]
default-features = false

Build Systems

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:

[dependencies.libui-ng-sys]
features = ["build-with-msvc"] # Or "build-with-xcode"!

Build Requirements

If libui-ng is to be built from source, the host environment must provide a working C compiler, linker, and Python installation (≥ v3.7) at a minimum.

Additional per-platform build requirements are listed in the below sections.

Linux Build Requirements

GTK3 (≥ v3.10.0) is required. GTK4 is not currently supported.

GTK can be installed on APT-based systems with this command:

apt-get install libgtk-3-dev

Windows Build Requirements

A Windows 10 or 11 SDK is required.

SDKs may be acquired from the Visual Studio Installer.

Common Errors on Windows

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:

basic.basic.6dc1d4cc-cgu.0.rcgu.o : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol uiInit referenced in function _ZN5basic4main17h947588e76d3f9c99E

Vendored Dependencies

libui-ng-sys vendors libui-ng, Meson, and Ninja as Git submodules. The latest commit hashes and nominal versions of these submodules are documented below for each release of libui-ng-sys.

0.7.0

0.2.0–0.6.0

0.1.0

Acknowledgements

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.