A community fork of GPUI, Zed's GPU-accelerated UI framework.

[dependencies]
gpui = { package = "gpui-ce", version = "0.3" }
gpui_platform = { git = "https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce" }

# for test support...
[dev-dependencies]
gpui = { package = "gpui-ce", version = "0.3", features = ["test-support"] }

or for using the git version

gpui = { package = "gpui", git = "https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce" }

Then use gpui::{import} as normal.

Other efforts (namely WGPUI) are actively maintained, but have diverged quite a bit from mainline usage. They typically serve the interests of the projects that they're used within, leading to a diverse yet fragmented ecosystem. GPUI-CE strives to focus on the general use-case first, and over time, grow in the facilities to support the same outside adaptations through a single consistent API.

We'd like to be a premiere Rust GUI library! For the time being, we're working incrementally, in an effort to better understand the codebase and where is the right direction to take it, so we're okay being limited by mainline Zed. We will not stay this way forever! The spirit of the project is independence, so "limited" is loose, and we have and will continue to add features that mainline will never have. We will make your contribution work :)

If you'd like to join discussions and help us forge an path forward, please join the discord.

100% Because we're a drop-in for GPUI, any component library or surrounding project should work 1:1 through the use of a patch block. DO NOTE: We track the latest upstream -- if there's breaking changes and the library you're pulling in hasn't updated yet, gpui-ce cannot help you. Otherwise, we treat any mismatches as bugs.

Example:

# If they're using the crates release
[patch.crates-io]
gpui = { git = "https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce", package = "gpui-ce" }

# If they're using the git remote
[patch."https://github.com/zed-industries/zed.git"]
gpui = { git = "https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce }

For sure! Join the discord

GPUI is a hybrid immediate and retained mode, GPU accelerated, UI framework for Rust, designed to support a wide variety of applications.

Everything in GPUI starts with an Application. You can create one with gpui_platform::application(), and kick off your application by passing a callback to Application::run(). Inside this callback, you can create a new window with App::open_window(), and register your first root view. See gpui.rs for a complete example.

GPUI has various system dependencies that it needs in order to work.

On macOS, GPUI uses Metal for rendering. In order to use Metal, you need to do the following:

• Install Xcode from the macOS App Store, or from the Apple Developer website. Note this requires a developer account.

Ensure you launch Xcode after installing, and install the macOS components, which is the default option.

• Install Xcode command line tools

  xcode-select --install

• Ensure that the Xcode command line tools are using your newly installed copy of Xcode:

  sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

GPUI offers three different registers depending on your needs:

• State management and communication with Entity's. Whenever you need to store application state that communicates between different parts of your application, you'll want to use GPUI's entities. Entities are owned by GPUI and are only accessible through an owned smart pointer similar to an Rc. See the app::context module for more information.

• High level, declarative UI with views. All UI in GPUI starts with a view. A view is simply an Entity that can be rendered, by implementing the Render trait. At the start of each frame, GPUI will call this render method on the root view of a given window. Views build a tree of elements, lay them out and style them with a tailwind-style API, and then give them to GPUI to turn into pixels. See the div element for an all purpose swiss-army knife of rendering.

• Low level, imperative UI with Elements. Elements are the building blocks of UI in GPUI, and they provide a nice wrapper around an imperative API that provides as much flexibility and control as you need. Elements have total control over how they and their child elements are rendered and can be used for making efficient views into large lists, implement custom layouting for a code editor, and anything else you can think of. See the element module for more information.

Each of these registers has one or more corresponding contexts that can be accessed from all GPUI services. This context is your main interface to GPUI, and is used extensively throughout the framework.

In addition to the systems above, GPUI provides a range of smaller services that are useful for building complex applications:

• Actions are user-defined structs that are used for converting keystrokes into logical operations in your UI. Use this for implementing keyboard shortcuts, such as cmd-q. See the action module for more information.

• Platform services, such as quit the app or open a URL are available as methods on the app::App.

• An async executor that is integrated with the platform's event loop. See the executor module for more information.,

• The [gpui::test] macro provides a convenient way to write tests for your GPUI applications. Tests also have their own kind of context, a TestAppContext which provides ways of simulating common platform input. See app::test_context and test modules for more details.

Currently, the best way to learn about these APIs is to read the Zed source code or drop a question in the Zed Discord. We're working on improving the documentation, creating more examples, and will be publishing more guides to GPUI on our blog.