6 ms·

I'm not sure what you mean by posting just this link. But I'll repeat what I've been saying for a while. The Rust ecosystem is making significant advances towar

I'm not sure what you mean by posting just this link. But I'll repeat what I've been saying for a while. The Rust ecosystem is making significant advances toward building what I believe will be a world class GUI toolkit, but we do not yet have a mature, usable solution, and getting there will take time. There are no shortcuts either, though it is possible to get something working by lashing together existing pieces. I obviously consider Druid to to be one of the most promising approaches, but even that aside there are other projects that could become a solid GUI toolkit, including Iced. I also encourage people to look at Makepad, as it does a lot of innovative things and emphasizes priorities such as small binary size and fast compile time.

busterarm 6y ago
As someone not at all involved in Rust but interested in its progress, I think this is an important milestone to hit. In most orgs that I've been a part of, no language tends to meet the standard for consideration until it has been the core of at least one very large public software project. A functioning GUI toolkit is likely a major barrier to that happening in Rust. Until then, we know it exists but doesn't pass inspection for inclusion. So far the largest things we know of built with it are Servo's CSS engine and the NPM authentication service.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  > In most orgs that I've been a part of, no language tends to meet the standard for consideration until it has been the core of at least one very large public software project. > So far the largest things we know of built with it are Servo's CSS engine and the NPM authentication service. Here are some others, for your consideration: * Dropbox's storage layer: https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/extending-magic-pocket-innovation-with-the-first-petabyte-scale-smr-drive-deployment https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/extending-magic-pocket-i... * CrosVM is an important part of ChromeOS https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm/+/837b59f2d97b005ef84ac36efa97530c1bbf2a79/README.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm... * Firecracker is the underlying tech of AWS Lambda and Fargate https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ * More coming from Amazon I don't have the ability to easily cite just yet, I hope the re:Invent recordings go up somewhere sometime soon * "EdenSCM is the primary source control system used at Facebook,": https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden There's a bunch of other stuff too, of course. Apple has been hiring, but I don't think their usage is public yet. Microsoft is hiring rustc hackers, and has some other stuff going on. And tons of other stuff that may count as "large" depending on how you define it.
  - losvedir 6y ago
    What about Cloudflare? I thought they were really using a lot of rust, but maybe that was just because you joined for a time!
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      You know, I was like "I know I am forgetting some major stuff" but couldn't put my finger on it, and yes, that is absolutely one of the things I've been forgetting. They are using quite a bit of Rust: * The 1.1.1.1 app's core is in Rust (this is one of the most prominent, if not most prominent, usages of Rust on iOS/Android) * Their HTTP/3 implementation is in Rust (I am very excited about this one, personally) * Workers has multiple parts; the CLI, HTMLRewriter... (This was related to the team I worked on, so I have a soft spot for it) ... and probably more that I'm forgetting. Honestly, it's really nice that there's so much Rust these days that it's easy to forget all of the cool stuff. And there's a lot that I'd consider meaningful that may or may not be "large," so I was shooting for only the largest. 1Password and Discord are huge for me, but maybe others don't think so.
      - praveenperera 6y ago
        Also Wirefilter for their Firewall Rules Source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-firewall-rules/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-firewall-rules/
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- est31 6y ago
  Don't forget fuchsia. It has over 800k lines of Rust (not counting dependencies, then it has >2M): https://i.imgur.com/gknVmYk.png https://i.imgur.com/gknVmYk.png
  - busterarm 6y ago
    Its kernel is still predominantly C++ & Assembly.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      ... but since Fuchsia is totally-not-a-microkernel, a lot of stuff that would be in the kernel in, say, Linux, is not in the kernel in Fuchsia.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        True, but outside of the kernel the official SDK languages are C++, Go and Dart.
        est31 6y ago
        The "kernel" of fuchsia is a microkernel, but when one talks about the Rust-free core of fuchsia, people usually mean the "zircon" component that encompasses both the microkernel as well as core utilities. Around this zircon component they built a set of higher level components. They'd still be considered important parts of an operating system. E.g. things like a bluetooth stack. The SDK you mention is for end user programs targetting the OS.
        steveklabnik 6y ago
        You're conflating two different things; outside the kernel, but inside of the OS, you can use Rust. They are using an increasing amount of it, as the other comment shows. What you're talking about is the SDK for people writing applications to run on top of Fuchsia.
        mbStavola 6y ago
monoideism 6y ago
Eh, there have been "promising approaches" for years now. It's clear that GUI is not one of the priorities of Rust developers, and that's OK. Its real innovations are more important for lower-level stuff anyway.
ghouj 6y ago
I would argue it’s not possible for Rust to have a “world-class” toolkit, because it seems implied that it’d be cross-platform. This means it’ll always lag behind UIKit, AppKit, GTK/Qt, and... whatever Windows has these days. The Iced project used as an example has a custom renderer for example... does it support VoiceOver? Does it support every standard Cocoa keyboard shortcut? Rust wrappers for these existing libraries (some exist) that maintain all functionality is what would allow “world-class” apps to be built in pure Rust IMO.
- zerr 6y ago
  wxRust needs to be resurrected. wxWidgets is a wrapper around native controls.
- raphlinus 6y ago
  I agree that support for VoiceOver (and other assistive technology) and full support for keyboard shortcuts is essential for a production GUI toolkit. We certainly don't do those yet, but I do think we can get there. Rust makes it easier to bind platform capabilities at a low level than most other languages. As an example, we do cut'n'paste cross-platform, supporting complex media types, not just plain text, so we can round-trip a vector glyph from Runebender to other font editors. I think that's a taste of being able to take on these more ambitious challenges. Also, "native" UI toolkits are a lot less actually native than they used to be. On Windows, the old HWND-per-control and GDI drawing model (long considered the standard for "native" Windows UI) is long obsolete, and there are actually a whole bunch of toolkits that people use, with UWP the most actively supported. Apple has a stronger story, but even there you have AppKit + SwiftUI, and technically Catalyst is officially supported, though nobody would argue it's actually a good experience. And the fact is, a lot of people are using Electron, because it actually solves the business problem of delivering good-enough UI. I think we have a good shot at competing against that niche, and also that building it on Rust is a more solid foundation than any other language ecosystem.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    You are also missing the eco-system part, having just a bare bones GUI support isn't enough. A sucessful Rust GUI also needs the likes Telerik, Component ONE and similar third party vendors with GUI component libraries.

busterarm 6y ago

As someone not at all involved in Rust but interested in its progress, I think this is an important milestone to hit. In most orgs that I've been a part of, no language tends to meet the standard for consideration until it has been the core of at least one very large public software project. A functioning GUI toolkit is likely a major barrier to that happening in Rust. Until then, we know it exists but doesn't pass inspection for inclusion. So far the largest things we know of built with it are Servo's CSS engine and the NPM authentication service.

steveklabnik 6y ago
> In most orgs that I've been a part of, no language tends to meet the standard for consideration until it has been the core of at least one very large public software project. > So far the largest things we know of built with it are Servo's CSS engine and the NPM authentication service. Here are some others, for your consideration: * Dropbox's storage layer: https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/extending-magic-pocket-innovation-with-the-first-petabyte-scale-smr-drive-deployment https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/extending-magic-pocket-i... * CrosVM is an important part of ChromeOS https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm/+/837b59f2d97b005ef84ac36efa97530c1bbf2a79/README.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm... * Firecracker is the underlying tech of AWS Lambda and Fargate https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ * More coming from Amazon I don't have the ability to easily cite just yet, I hope the re:Invent recordings go up somewhere sometime soon * "EdenSCM is the primary source control system used at Facebook,": https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden There's a bunch of other stuff too, of course. Apple has been hiring, but I don't think their usage is public yet. Microsoft is hiring rustc hackers, and has some other stuff going on. And tons of other stuff that may count as "large" depending on how you define it.
- losvedir 6y ago
  What about Cloudflare? I thought they were really using a lot of rust, but maybe that was just because you joined for a time!
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    You know, I was like "I know I am forgetting some major stuff" but couldn't put my finger on it, and yes, that is absolutely one of the things I've been forgetting. They are using quite a bit of Rust: * The 1.1.1.1 app's core is in Rust (this is one of the most prominent, if not most prominent, usages of Rust on iOS/Android) * Their HTTP/3 implementation is in Rust (I am very excited about this one, personally) * Workers has multiple parts; the CLI, HTMLRewriter... (This was related to the team I worked on, so I have a soft spot for it) ... and probably more that I'm forgetting. Honestly, it's really nice that there's so much Rust these days that it's easy to forget all of the cool stuff. And there's a lot that I'd consider meaningful that may or may not be "large," so I was shooting for only the largest. 1Password and Discord are huge for me, but maybe others don't think so.
    - praveenperera 6y ago
      Also Wirefilter for their Firewall Rules Source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-firewall-rules/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-firewall-rules/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
est31 6y ago
Don't forget fuchsia. It has over 800k lines of Rust (not counting dependencies, then it has >2M): https://i.imgur.com/gknVmYk.png https://i.imgur.com/gknVmYk.png
- busterarm 6y ago
  Its kernel is still predominantly C++ & Assembly.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    ... but since Fuchsia is totally-not-a-microkernel, a lot of stuff that would be in the kernel in, say, Linux, is not in the kernel in Fuchsia.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      True, but outside of the kernel the official SDK languages are C++, Go and Dart.
      - est31 6y ago
        The "kernel" of fuchsia is a microkernel, but when one talks about the Rust-free core of fuchsia, people usually mean the "zircon" component that encompasses both the microkernel as well as core utilities. Around this zircon component they built a set of higher level components. They'd still be considered important parts of an operating system. E.g. things like a bluetooth stack. The SDK you mention is for end user programs targetting the OS.
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        You're conflating two different things; outside the kernel, but inside of the OS, you can use Rust. They are using an increasing amount of it, as the other comment shows. What you're talking about is the SDK for people writing applications to run on top of Fuchsia.
      - mbStavola 6y ago

monoideism 6y ago

Eh, there have been "promising approaches" for years now. It's clear that GUI is not one of the priorities of Rust developers, and that's OK. Its real innovations are more important for lower-level stuff anyway.

ghouj 6y ago

I would argue it’s not possible for Rust to have a “world-class” toolkit, because it seems implied that it’d be cross-platform. This means it’ll always lag behind UIKit, AppKit, GTK/Qt, and... whatever Windows has these days. The Iced project used as an example has a custom renderer for example... does it support VoiceOver? Does it support every standard Cocoa keyboard shortcut? Rust wrappers for these existing libraries (some exist) that maintain all functionality is what would allow “world-class” apps to be built in pure Rust IMO.

zerr 6y ago
wxRust needs to be resurrected. wxWidgets is a wrapper around native controls.
raphlinus 6y ago
I agree that support for VoiceOver (and other assistive technology) and full support for keyboard shortcuts is essential for a production GUI toolkit. We certainly don't do those yet, but I do think we can get there. Rust makes it easier to bind platform capabilities at a low level than most other languages. As an example, we do cut'n'paste cross-platform, supporting complex media types, not just plain text, so we can round-trip a vector glyph from Runebender to other font editors. I think that's a taste of being able to take on these more ambitious challenges. Also, "native" UI toolkits are a lot less actually native than they used to be. On Windows, the old HWND-per-control and GDI drawing model (long considered the standard for "native" Windows UI) is long obsolete, and there are actually a whole bunch of toolkits that people use, with UWP the most actively supported. Apple has a stronger story, but even there you have AppKit + SwiftUI, and technically Catalyst is officially supported, though nobody would argue it's actually a good experience. And the fact is, a lot of people are using Electron, because it actually solves the business problem of delivering good-enough UI. I think we have a good shot at competing against that niche, and also that building it on Rust is a more solid foundation than any other language ecosystem.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  You are also missing the eco-system part, having just a bare bones GUI support isn't enough. A sucessful Rust GUI also needs the likes Telerik, Component ONE and similar third party vendors with GUI component libraries.