iris/readme.md

iris

My experimental attempt at a rust ui library (also my first ui library).

It's currently designed around using retained data structures (widgets), rather than diffing generated trees from data like xilem or iced. This is an experiment and I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not.

Examples are in examples, eg. cargo run --example tabs. Each example keeps its widget tree in lib.rs and its small desktop and Android hosts in desktop.rs and android.rs.

Android applications

An Android application is a library because Android loads its Rust code as a native shared library:

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib", "rlib"]

[dependencies]
iris = { path = "../iris" }

[package.metadata.iris.android]
application-id = "com.example.myapp"
label = "My app"

#[iris::android_init] marks the initializer called when Android creates the Iris view. The attribute supplies its own Android target gate and generates the JNI loader glue. An application with no state beyond the UI state receives AndroidUiState directly by mutable reference:

use iris::prelude::*;

fn build<Rsc: UiRsc>(rsc: &mut Rsc, ui_state: &mut impl HasRoot<Rsc>) {
    rect(PaintId::RED).set_root(rsc, ui_state);
}

#[iris::android_init]
fn create(
    ui_state: &mut AndroidUiState,
    rsc: &mut StdRsc<AndroidUiState>,
) {
    build(rsc, ui_state);
}

Desktop has the corresponding initializer form:

DesktopApp::run_with(build);

Background work updates either host through the same task context. An update wakes the UI thread; Iris schedules a frame automatically if the closure made the retained widget tree dirty:

rsc.spawn_task(async move |mut ctx| {
    let text = load_text().await;
    ctx.update(move |_, rsc| label(rsc).set(&text));
});

Applications do not need a winit event proxy or an explicit redraw request.

Applications with additional fields use their own state type. Its AndroidAppState::Resources associated type can also replace StdRsc with a custom resource bundle.

Install the Cargo subcommand from a checkout, then invoke it from the application's directory:

cargo install --path /path/to/iris/cargo-iris
cargo iris apk --abi arm64-v8a
cargo iris run --abi x86_64 --device emulator-5554

Package examples use the same command with --example:

cargo run --example tabs
cargo iris apk --example tabs --abi arm64-v8a
cargo iris run --example tabs --abi x86_64 --device emulator-5554

cargo iris packages directly with cargo-ndk, javac, d8, aapt2, jar, zipalign, and apksigner; it does not require Gradle. The caller provides a JDK, Android SDK and NDK, and any emulator or physical device. Set ANDROID_HOME to the SDK. run always requires an explicit device and never creates or starts one.

Debug APKs use the standard key at ~/.android/debug.keystore, creating it with keytool when absent. A release build requires the long-lived signing identity explicitly:

IRIS_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD=... IRIS_KEY_PASSWORD=... \
  cargo iris apk --release --keystore /secure/upload.jks --key-alias upload

The verified APK lives under target/iris-android/<package>[-<example>]/<debug|release>/<abi>/; packaging intermediates are removed before the command prints its absolute path.

Goals, in general order:

1. does what I want it to (text, images, video, animations)
2. very easy to use ignoring ergonomic ref counting
3. reasonably fast / efficient (a lot faster than electron, save battery life, try to beat iced and xilem)

dev details

not targeting web rn cause wanna use actual nice gpu features & entire point of this is to make desktop apps / not need a web browser

general ideas trynna use rn / experiment with:

• retained mode
• specifically designed around wgpu so there's no translation
• postfix functions for most things to prevent unreadable indentation (going very well)
• events can be done directly where you draw the widgets
• almost no macros in user code & actual LSP typechecking (variadic generics if you can hear me please save us)
• relative anchor + absolute offset coord system (+ "rest" / leftover during widget layout)
• single threaded ui & pass context around to make non async usage straightforward (pretty unsure about this)
• widgets store outside of the actual rendering so they can be moved around and swapped easily (unsure about this but seems to work good for now)

under heavy initial development so not gonna try to explain status, maybe check TODO for that; sizable chance it gets a rewrite once I know everything I need and what seems to work best

it's called iris because it's the structure around what you actually want to display and colorful