zgt: a GUI library for Zig

GUIs in Zig, but idiomatic

As of now, zgt is NOT ready for use in production as I'm still making breaking changes

Introduction

zgt is a graphical user interface library for Zig. It is mainly intended for creating applications using native controls from the operating system. zgt is a declarative UI library aiming to be easy to write for and versatile.

It has been made with the goal to empower standalone UI applications, integration in games or any other rendering process is a non-goal.

Usage

zgt can be used as any other library using the Zig build package system. It only requires adding this code to your build.zig file (it also manages backend-specific configuration):

try @import("zgt/build.zig").install(exe, "./path/to/zgt");

A simple application using zgt:

const zgt = @import("zgt");
const std = @import("std");

pub fn main() !void {
    try zgt.backend.init();

    var window = try zgt.Window.init();
    try window.set(
        zgt.Column(.{ .spacing = 10 }, .{ // have 10px spacing between each column's element
            zgt.Row(.{ .spacing = 5 }, .{ // have 5px spacing between each row's element
                zgt.Button(.{ .label = "Save", .onclick = buttonClicked }),
                zgt.Button(.{ .label = "Run",  .onclick = buttonClicked })
            }),
            // Expanded means the widget will take all the space it can
            // in the parent container
            zgt.Expanded(
                zgt.TextArea(.{ .text = "Hello World!" })
            )
        })
    );

    window.resize(800, 600);
    window.show();
    zgt.runEventLoop();
}

fn buttonClicked(button: *zgt.Button_Impl) !void {
    std.log.info("You clicked button with text {s}", .{button.getLabel()});
}

It is easy to add something like a button or a text area. The example can already be used to notice a widget's parameters are usually enclosed in anonymous structs (.{ .label = "Save" }). You can also see that simply wrapping a widget with zgt.Expanded( ... ) will tell it to take all the space it can.

Supported platforms

A platform is considered supported only if it can be built from every other OS.

✅ Windows x86_64
✅ Linux x86_64
✅ Linux aarch64 (PinePhone, PineBook...)
✅ WebAssembly
🏃 macOS M1
🏃 macOS aarch64

• ✅ Working and can be cross-compile from all platforms supported by Zig
• 🏃 Planned

Note: As there's no "official" GUI library for Linux, GTK 3 has been chosen as it is the one that works and can be configured on the most distros. It's also the reason Libadwaita won't be adopted, as it's meant for GNOME and GNOME only by disallowing styling and integration with other DEs.