burrito
wxWidgets
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burrito
- Why are Apple Silicon VMs so different?
- Show HN: Burrito v1.0.0 – Wrap Elixir Apps into Standalone Binaries
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Elixir at Ramp
Most of the BEAM isn't well-suited for trends in today's immutable architecture world (Docker deploys on something like Kubernetes or ECS). Bootup time on the VM can be long compared to running a Go or OCaml binary, or some Python applications (I find larger Python apps tend to spend a ton of time loading modules). Compile times aren't as fast as Go, so if a fresh deploy requires downloading modules and compile-from-scratch, that'll be longer than other stacks. Now, if you use stateful deploys and hot-code reloading, it's not so bad, but incorporating that involves a bit more risk and specific expertise that most companies don't want to roll into. Basically, the opposite of this article https://ferd.ca/a-pipeline-made-of-airbags.html
Macros are neat but they can really mess up your compile times, and they don't compose well (e.g. ExConstructor and typed_struct and Ecto Schemas all operate on Elixir Structs, but you can't use all three)
If your problem is CPU-bound, there are much better choices: C++, Rust, C. Python has a million libraries that use great FFI so you'll be fine using that too. Ditto memory-bound: there are better languages for this.
This is also not borne from direct experience, but: my understanding is the JVM has a lot more knobs to tune GC. The BEAM GC is IMO amazing, and did the right thing from the beginning to prevent stop-the-world pauses, but if you care about other metrics (good list in this article https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd...) you're probably better off with a JVM language.
While the BEAM is great at distribution, "distributed Erlang" (using the VM's features instead of what most companies do, and ad-hoc it with containers and infra) makes assumptions that you can't break, like default k-clustering (one node must be connected to all other nodes). This means you can distribute to some number of nodes, but it's hard to use Distributed Erlang for hundreds or thousands of nodes.
Deployment can be mixed, depending on what you want. BEAM Releases are nice but the lack some of the niceness of direct binaries. Libraries can work around this (like Burrito https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito).
If you like static types, Dialyzer is the worst of the "bolted-on" type checkers. mypy/pyright/pyre, Sorbet, Typescript are all way better, since Dialyzer only does "success typing," and gives way worse messages.
[1]: https://morepablo.com/2023/05/where-have-all-the-hackers-gone.html
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Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
The answer was given by the Elixir community with burrito which enables users to pack up everything an Elixir application needs within a binary namely Zig Archiver to package the binary and Zig Wrapper that wraps the Erlang Virtual Machine to be used in multiple platforms (Zig + Rust in the same project 🤯).
- Burrito: Cross-Platform Elixir Deployments
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Is Elixir a good fit for a hobbyist? (Homelab automation/Content Backlog Management)
Might be worth looking into burrito for that use case?
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Which language to choose ?
Elixir is extremely practical for building systems, I know some sysadmin/devops that write their tools in it - which is maybe a bit of a leap for most. It has better support for cli stuff these days but it's not it's strong suit - you can create single-bin packages with stuff like https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito or regular "mix releases". (LiveView is very sexy.) It's not statically typed. There is some experimental skunkworks project to add typing to it but probably wont see any public preview until mid/late next year as I understand it.
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Sell me on Elixir
I would consider 1 to be the major blocker but Burrito has addressed many of the concerns here, including cross-compilation. The only downside of Burrito is that the first boot has to unpack the runtime (which is sub-second in my experience).
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FireZone – Tailscale Alternative – The Open Source VPN Server and Firewall
Sure! Elixir's been great. Phoenix is a joy to work with, and many of the concurrency primitives built into OTP make it the perfect foundation for a product like this. And rustler makes it super easy to add low-level / native code.
I will say the big downside to using Elixir is that distributing releases is a bit cumbersome. `mix release` expects that you're building on the same OS / version as you'll be running on, though we're looking into using something like burrito [1] aim to alleviate this.
[1] https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito
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Zig monthly, October 2021: Games, gamedev, Elixir, tools and more
I was intrigued so I went to hunt for the Burrito repo [1].
I thought it was some sort of Erlang native compiler written in Zig (which sounds like an incredible pain in the ass), but it's really "just" a cross-platform installer. Still useful !
[1]: https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito/issues?q=is%3Aissu...
wxWidgets
- Solitaire: Authentic remake of the Windows 95 original
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Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
The Elixir programming language is no stranger to desktop applications as the language actually supports building them out of the box. It uses wxWidgets: a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. But wxWidgets has a very complex API, and doesn’t solve issues that usually come with desktop applications around packaging.
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WxWidgets – open-source C++ cross platform GUI
Qt is also 100% open/free. In fact, both are available under the LGPL, just that wxWidgets also grants an exception to not have to distribute application sources even when statically linked:
https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets#licence
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Need for GUIs for bioinformatic tools?
But for big programs, ones written in C++? Good luck it won’t be easy at all. You might try wxwidgets or qt. I do not predict trying to click box-ify complex cli tools yielding much success.
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Create desktop application
In theory, you should be able to use FFI to interface with something like wxWindows, but you might again have problems on macOS, I don't know. And to me eyes, Wx looks a bit outdated.
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IUP – Cross platform C GUI library
This seems to be like the classic wxWidgets [1], i.e. it's an API that wraps the underlying platform's default toolkit. So on Windows it uses Windows' native controls, in Linux it seems to use GTK, and so on.
That means that the advantage is being able to write against one API, and get cross-platform compatibility, which can be nice. It also means (typically) being limited in what you can do to the least common denominator, or you (=the toolkit author) end up having to re-implement features from one platform that you want to expose but that are missing on some supported target(s). Or, of course, have an API with non-portable parts in it.
In any case, it means the "look and feel" is not the core feature of the API since that is going to be "like the target platform" and that is the point.
Given the origin, I guess Lua support is important too, here.
[1]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/
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Creating C++ windowed applications
- So, I found wxWidgets. Which looked good. However, when I followed some tutorials I was getting errors. Even when I copied and pasted the tutorial code. Furthermore, the library still doesn't seem to simplify the process much.
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What does this icon belong to? I've seen it used in many pieces of software, but I never found out what it actually is from.
It is the icon for WXWidgets, a programming toolkit for making user interfaces that work on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
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Inkscape is hiring: Accelerating the GTK4 migration
In general, people will use a cross-platform library to port such applications. While QT will likely never really stabilize (I'd flag it unsustainable), the https://www.wxwidgets.org/ is able to be statically linked into commercial and opensource projects at no cost without tripping GPL.
"Hiring a senior C++ developer with GTK experience is costlier"
I think you are confusing skill valuation, and operational productivity. Some have an erroneous notion talent is interchangeable. Likewise, applicants with identical base skill-sets on their CV often mistakenly believe they even have long-term employment options (outsourced, youth tax credit churn, and or senior wage suppression).
Most FOSS people are easier to train, as most already can mitigate utter chaos already. =)
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Is it possible to build a gui which is both cross compatible and native?
There are a few like that in the C++ community. WxWidgets is the most famous/popular with this approach. But it is a library almost impossible to use in other languages because their api is heavily templated.
What are some alternatives?
zig - General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.
imgui - Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies
ex_tauri - Utility to build Phoenix Desktop applications using web views from Tauri
FLTK - FLTK - Fast Light Tool Kit - https://github.com/fltk/fltk - cross platform GUI development
sendgrid-v3 - Haskell Sendgrid v3 API Library
gtkmm - Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtkmm
Rustler - Safe Rust bridge for creating Erlang NIF functions
GTK+ - Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk
babashka - Native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting
nana - a modern C++ GUI library
capacitor - Build cross-platform Native Progressive Web Apps for iOS, Android, and the Web ⚡️
libui - Simple and portable (but not inflexible) GUI library in C that uses the native GUI technologies of each platform it supports.