Yue VS meal-scheduler

For a recent project I chose Yue (https://libyue.com/), a cross-platform native widget GUI toolkit with C++, JavaScript/Node.js, and Lua. I've only used the Lua interface and macOS backend, but it has worked quite well, despite the very steep learning curve. This was also my first desktop GUI app, so I had to learn many implicit concepts that weren't obvious from the otherwise extensive documentation.

Yue was also the only option that 1) supported macOS, 2) supported Lua, 3) was sufficiently comprehensive to build a non-toy GUI app, 4) and that I could integrate into my (static) build. I couldn't even get the wxWidgets Lua interfaces to compile, and Qt and Fltk had similar stories, whereas reverse-engineering the baroque Yue build (based on Google's internal build systems) was relatively simple. Yue had some sharp edges, but I was able to work around them whilst patiently waiting for patches and fixes upstream.

Immediate mode interfaces were a non-starter for me. For a non-trivial set of otherwise typical controls and window management you have to implement too much yourself, plus being non-native they not only felt wrong (which admittedly is somewhat subjective; the younger crowd seems to think non-native, immediate mode interfaces look more state-of-the-art), but lacked other interfaces for proper desktop integration, like theme change signaling (i.e. notification that a user switch between light and dark modes in the macOS system settings panel).

All-in-all I would highly recommend Yue.

I settled for Yue: https://github.com/yue/yue It's been around for several years. The deciding factor for me was that is has well maintained Lua bindings as part of the core project alongside JavaScript (Node.js) and C++.

I didn't have much luck with libui (crashes, missing features, etc), and various immediate mode alternatives just require too many dependencies and other work that made integration too painful. Plus, Lua bindings for all these were always stale. In fact, Lua binding quality is pretty poor all around including for GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, and FLTK.

A native GUI library https://github.com/yue/yue.

It was a disaster when I announced it on Hacker News, and I got numerous harassments from strangers.

But anyway 2 years since then and I'm still working on it.

I use Minizinc in a personal toy project (https://gitlab.com/dustin-space/meal-scheduler), and GECODE or Google's ortools solver at the backend. It's used for meal planning. Unfortunately it's way way slower than I'd hope. I suspect I just have the domain not modeled efficiently. Maybe if I had a few days to put into it, and learn how to properly debug the CSP solver step by step, it might help...

I wrote a meal scheduler - https://gitlab.com/dustin-space/meal-scheduler. It tracks ingredients we have at home, it has a database of recipes, it knows where we can buy ingredients online (for delivery).

It schedules meals for my shared household.

That sounds like a fun application, both the usage and the implementation.

I wonder if you have any interesting example data-files that could be used with the model, preferable both something small and something larger? Would be fun to test the model locally to see how it behaves.

Notes: I'm assuming here that https://gitlab.com/dustin-space/meal-scheduler/-/blob/master... is the model used.