sahwar / wiish

Why Is It So Hard (to make a cross-platform app)?

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Wiish (Why Is It So Hard) GUI framework might one day make it easy to develop, package and deploy auto-updating, cross-platform applications for desktop and mobile. If it succeeds, maybe the name will have to change :)

Wiish is currently ALPHA quality software. Don't make anything with it unless you're willing to rewrite it when this package changes.

Quickstart

1. Install Nim and nimble

2. Install Wiish:

   nimble install https://github.com/iffy/wiish.git
   

3. Install other dependencies:

   • Android SDK and Android NDK for Android apps
   • Ubuntu: apt-get install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev
   • macOS: no other deps
   • Windows: no other deps (maybe?)

4. Create a project and run it:

   wiish init somedir
   cd somedir
   wiish run
   

See wiish --help for how to build executables and apps. For example:

wiish run --ios
wiish run --android
wiish build
wiish init --base-template opengl my_opengl_app

Features

Wiish provides 2 main things:

1. wiish - A command line tool for running, building and packaging apps.
2. wiishpkg - A Nim library for making apps. This is further divided into:
   • wiishpkg/webview_desktop - Library for making Webview-based desktop apps.
   • wiishpkg/webview_mobile - Library for making Webview-based mobile apps.
   • wiishpkg/sdlapp - Library for making SDL and/or OpenGL apps (both desktop and mobile).

The GUI component is designed to work separately from other features (e.g. auto-updating, packaging, etc...) so that different GUI libraries can be swapped in/out.

Here is what's currently supported:

Library

Feature	Windows	macOS	Linux	iOS	Android
wiish run		Y	Y	Y	Y
wiish build		Y		Y	Y
wiish package
Code signing
Log to file		Y
Log to console w/ run		Y	Y	Y	Y
Package resources		Y		Y	Y
Menu bar				-	-
Automatic updates				-	-
App icon		Y		Y	Y
File associations				-	-

GUI

Feature	Windows	macOS	Linux	iOS	Android
OpenGL		Y	Y	Y	Y
SDL2		Y	Y	Y
Webview		Y	Y	Y	Y

Y = complete, - = not applicable

Examples

See the examples directory for more examples of how to use this library. You can also initialize a project using these examples with wiish init. See wiish init --help for information.

Developing wiish

See CONTRIBUTING.md for information about contributing to Wiish development.