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Which GUI crate? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by Charger8232@lemmy.ml to c/rust@programming.dev

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I can't figure out which crate(s) I should be using to create GUI applications. I only want to create simple 2D games like Conway's Game of Life, so I don't need anything fancy. At most I would like to be able to easily create polygons.

I've already looked at Are we game yet?, but it would be a waste of time to learn 20 different crates in order to decide on which one to use. Bevy is far too heavy and doesn't even work if you are low on memory. SDL3 isn't natively supported without some workarounds (but SDL2 is fine). Winit tries to use insecure X11 unless I manually add it as a dependency with the Wayland feature. I plan to eventually learn GTK4+Adwaitta, but that's unnecessary for simple games.

GUI in Rust seams like a mess. There's so many crates ranging from simple to complicated. Information becomes outdated quickly, so LLMs often fail to help. There's few clear comparisons between crates to help you decide, so it becomes a headache. I'm just looking for a modern, safe, easy, minimal GUI crate.

Does anyone have any advice?

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[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 1 points 7 months ago

Personally I would start with plain SDL2 and then add GTK. Both of them are language-agnostic, so you are learning something that you can use in other projects too. And are widely used, so while the Rust binds might add some spiciness to the mix, it should be easier to search for clues