owlkettle VS cbindgen

This is really cool! I love the JSX-like approach to UI and it's a shame it's not so common on desktop. https://github.com/can-lehmann/owlkettle is the only thing I find comparable.

Ones that have not been mentioned so far:

nlvm is an unofficial LLVM backend: https://github.com/arnetheduck/nlvm

npeg lets you write PEGs inline in almost normal PEG notation: https://github.com/zevv/npeg

futhark provides for much more automatic C interop: https://github.com/PMunch/futhark

nimpy allows calling Python code from Nim and vice versa: https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy

questionable provides a lot of syntax sugar surrounding Option/Result types: https://github.com/codex-storage/questionable

ratel is a framework for embedded programming: https://github.com/PMunch/ratel

cps allows arbitrary procedure rewriting to continuation passing style: https://github.com/nim-works/cps

chronos is an alternative async/await backend: https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronos

zero-functional fixes some inefficiencies when chaining list operations: https://github.com/zero-functional/zero-functional

owlkettle is a declarative macro-oriented library for GTK: https://github.com/can-lehmann/owlkettle

A longer list can be found at https://github.com/ringabout/awesome-nim.

Although for a GUI (if I even made one, rather than just a fixed/hardcoded setup) I'd probably use Owlkettle(though there are some things I don't like about it, see closed issue 16).

A similar library in nim is https://github.com/can-lehmann/owlkettle

There's also Owlkettle that seems a bit easier/cleaner IMO, though when I tried it I had some issues (clunky container workflow, wanting better scaling) and would prefer something similar using Qt.

Golang uses cgo to communicate with external C libraries and Rust uses FFI (Foreign function interfaces) to export C functions. Additionally, a library for automatically generating bindings can be used to generate the header files (.h). In our case, we'll only be exporting two C functions, so using cbindgen is overkill but we'll use it regardless because why not?  Firstly, we'll write the rust functions we want to export. We'll start by creating a new rust library:

[1]: https://github.com/mozilla/cbindgen

As a 2-step approach, you could also probably use https://github.com/mozilla/cbindgen and then Nim's native C FFI.

The tooling for the first kind -- calling Rust from another language -- is a bit less developed, and tends to rely on code generation that doesn't necessarily produce a natural C API. cbindgen, uniffi, cxx, and Diplomat all take this course.

There's also cbindgen for automating the generation of C headers once you've got your code in the right shape and you'll also want to read the Rustonomicon.

You can backport Rust standard library to C using https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen .

Later we'll see what cbindgen essentially does is receive a configuration and a Rust library and then spit out a C header (.h) file. One might think that what cbindgen is doing might not be that special and can be done by hand. In which some cases that might be true if the project is simple enough. Though additionally as the cbindgen documentation states:

Fuck it, I'll take the bait. Rust allows for amazing C interop by allowing for exporting of C types as a dynamic library, like C. Unlike C, this still allows for Rust's advanced checking at compile time. librsvg is one such library that is being used in the GTK ecosystem that is also almost completely Rust. You can use tools like cbindgen to generate C bindings.

Or alternatively cbindgen to create the header file from the Rust source.

The easiest way to obtain the headers for the rust code is to use the cbingen library.