QMetaObject crate for Rust VS Slint

You can use Rust with QML[1].

QML is actually pretty amazing. I've been building my block editor[2] view entirely in QML while the model is in C++. This separation of logic and presentation works great. And yes, there are some crashes sometimes (that I find quite easy to debug thanks to the built-in debugger), but take for example a similar app that's built with Rust and Dart[3], in my testing there were still memory leaks that caused my computer to hang. It's better to know you have a bug than for it to be hidden from you.

I agree with parent commenter, saying these cross-platform frameworks will end up supporting the least common denominator set of features. But I found with external open source libraries, the community is catching up very fast. For example, you want the awesome translucency macOS apps have for your Qt app? Here you go[4]. Many such cases. It's also pretty straightforward to add your own custom OS-dependent code, especially so, if someone already open sourced his approach. I recently wanted to move the traffic light buttons on macOS for my app, but couldn't figure the Objective-C code for that. I ended up looking at either Tauri or Electron source code and found my answer.

[1] https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs

[2] https://www.get-plume.com/

[3] https://www.appflowy.io/

[4] https://github.com/stdware/qwindowkit

I just used qmetaobject-rs and my experience with Qt/QML. There's the QML book from Qt if you're just starting, which is pretty nice https://www.qt.io/product/qt6/qml-book

You can use cxx-qt or qmetaobject-rs. Or use Slint

qmetaobject is probably the most mature Qt Rust binding at the moment. It uses the cpp crate to embed C++ inline in Rust to create its bindings. There are some people using it and it does get some maintenance, but it's not under active development since the original author is now working on Slint.

The bindings currently use the git version of qttypes since I had to merge some upstream changes that are needed for these bindings. So they are not ready for prime time just yet.

- It does support plugins: https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs/tree/master/examples...

I wonder what problems from the list apply to another existing and more mature solution: https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs/

There are a bunch of bindings with different language, but even the ones that are officially supported like PySide will still be second class citizen and awkward to use.

Automated binding generation will never give you idiomatic API in whatever language. And if you want an idiomatic library that wraps Qt, it's going to take a huge amount of work.

Which is why I think restricting to QML makes sense because that's a much smaller API surface. That was the ambition behind my previous crate that exposes QML to rust: https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs/

But now I've moved on to another GUI project: Slint https://github.com/slint-ui/slint

Whisperfish does this with Qt: https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs/issues/102

As an anecdote, the three top contributors to sixtyfps are ex-Qt people. I think it is not anecdotal that there is at least some degree of overlap and competition between Rust and C++, and that this is a market that surely The Qt Company is watching.

SixtyFPS (https://sixtyfps.io/) is in progress for Rust, but it is still early days. It also does not technically use a native toolkit (it uses Qt), but I believe that might be on roadmap. For traditional GUI apps, I think the lack of a table or tree widget is the most limiting for the time being. They have stated they intend to remedy that.

The most promising GUI hasn't been posted here, SixtyFPS. It's in it's early stages and not FOSS, but it's built by some ex-QT cats and has a lot of potential.

People have been recommending https://sixtyfps.io/ to me.

There is already a project to make a Qt like GUI toolkit in Rust: https://sixtyfps.io/ It is really similar to Qt https://sixtyfps.io/releases/0.1.5/docs/rust/sixtyfps/index.html

People are doing that too. https://sixtyfps.io/ is basically a Qt clone in Rust, actually developed by previous Qt developers.

spdlog, a pretty useful and more and more commonly used logging library for C++.\ SixtyFPS, an emerging GUI library for Rust, but you can use it in multiple languages. It uses OpenGL or Qt currently as backend (well, it's a new library and they wanted two from the get-go to make sure their abstractions are done right/well enough). They started a company this year for it too.

Just so some are not aware, there's a new project called sixtyfps by some people who were in the Qt world for long. I didn't take a deep dive into it but it looks promising.

https://sixtyfps.io/ have a toolkit with Rust with free and paid offerings. I haven't used it, but might be worth the look.