Getting started

Run the examples

Install Go 1.26.5, Rust 1.99.1 and protoc 35.1. On macOS you also need Apple's command line tools. The first build downloads dependencies and compiles GPUI, so it takes a while.

git clone https://github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go
cd gpui-go
make run

That builds the Rust library and opens a counter. Other examples:

Command	What it shows
make showcase	A component gallery and workspace dashboard with shared state and a background task
make text-inputs	The gallery's editable fields, for trying Unicode, selection and clipboard shortcuts
make features	Assets, canvas drawing, virtual lists, shortcuts, models and drag-and-drop
make reactive	Signals, GoX templates, conditional branches and keyed inputs
make counter-gox	The counter rewritten as a GoX template

Your first window

Call host.Run once from main. It takes over the process main thread for the platform event loop and runs your callback on a goroutine. Returning from the callback quits the application, and the callback must return when its context is canceled.

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go/client"
	"github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go/host"
	"github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go/scene"
)

func main() {
	err := host.Run(context.Background(), func(ctx context.Context, app *client.Client) error {
		_, err := app.OpenWindow(ctx, client.WindowOptions{
			Title: "Hello from Go", Width: 560, Height: 420,
		}, scene.Div(1, scene.Text(2, "Hello, GPUI!")))
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		return app.DispatchEvents(ctx)
	})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Build it

Until prebuilt modules are published, your program links a Rust archive built from a checkout. From the checkout, build the archive once:

cargo build --locked --release --manifest-path rust/native/Cargo.toml

In your own module, point the dependency at the checkout, then build with the native tags:

go mod edit -require=github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go@v0.0.0 \
            -replace=github.com/moriyoshi/gpui-go=/path/to/gpui-go
go mod tidy
CGO_LDFLAGS="-L/path/to/gpui-go/target/release -lgpui_go_native" \
  go build -tags gpui,sable_extern_lib,sable_portable -o hello .

Without the gpui tag the program still compiles, but host.Run returns ErrNativeUnavailable. After rebuilding the Rust archive, add -a to force a relink, because Go's build cache does not track it.