This page explains how to build and test Slint.
Install Rust by following the Rust Getting Started Guide. If you already
have Rust installed, make sure that it's at least version 1.70 or newer. You can check which version you have installed
by running rustc --version
.
Once this is done, you should have the rustc
compiler and the cargo
build system installed in your path.
-
FFMPEG
-
Skia (only few available binaries):
Platform | Binaries |
---|---|
Windows | x86_64-pc-windows-msvc |
Linux Ubuntu 16+ CentOS 7, 8 |
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu |
macOS | x86_64-apple-darwin |
Android | aarch64-linux-android x86_64-linux-android |
iOS | aarch64-apple-ios x86_64-apple-ios |
WebAssembly | wasm32-unknown-emscripten |
- Use Skia capable toolchain
rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
For Linux a few additional packages beyond the usual build essentials are needed for development and running apps:
- xcb (
libxcb-shape0-dev
libxcb-xfixes0-dev
on debian based distributions) - xkbcommon (
libxkbcommon-dev
on debian based distributions) - fontconfig library (
libfontconfig-dev
on debian based distributions) - (optional) Qt will be used when
qmake
is found inPATH
- FFMPEG library
clang
libavcodec-dev
libavformat-dev
libavutil-dev
libavfilter-dev
libavdevice-dev
libasound2-dev
pkg-config
xcb
and xcbcommon
aren't needed if you are only using backend-winit-wayland
without backend-winit-x11
.
- Make sure the "Xcode Command Line Tools" are installed:
xcode-select --install
- (optional) Qt will be used when
qmake
is found inPATH
- FFMPEG
brew install pkg-config ffmpeg
- See System Link
- Make sure the MSVC Build Tools are installed:
winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools
- (optional) make sure Qt is installed and
qmake
is in thePath
- FFMPEG
-
Option 1:
- install vcpkg
vcpkg install ffmpeg --triplet x64-windows
- Make sure
VCPKG_ROOT
is set to wherevcpkg
is installed - Make sure
%VCPKG_ROOT%\installed\x64-windows\bin
is in your path
-
Option 2:
- Download FFMPEG 4.4 shared and extract (https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/tag/latest)
- Add FFMPEG to path:
*\ffmpeg\bin
*\ffmpeg\include\libavutil
*\ffmpeg\lib
-
To use Slint from C++, the following extra dependencies are needed:
- cmake (3.21 or newer)
- Ninja (Optional, or remove the
-GNinja
when invokingcmake
) - A C++ compiler that supports C++20 (e.g., MSVC 2022 17.3 on Windows, or GCC 10)
To use Slint from Node.js, the following extra dependencies are needed.
The Slint repository makes use of symbolic links to avoid duplication. On Windows, this require to set a git config before cloning, and have Windows switched in developer mode or do the git clone as Administrator
git clone -c core.symlinks=true https://github.com/slint-ui/slint
More info: https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/Symbolic-Links
Most of the project is written in Rust, and compiling and running the test can done with cargo.
cargo build
cargo test
To build all examples install the entire workplace to executables (excluding UEFI-demo - different target)
- Build workspace
cargo build --workspace --exclude uefi-demo --release
Important: Note that cargo test
does not work without first calling cargo build
because the
the required dynamic library won't be found.
The C++ tests are contained in the test-driver-cpp
crate. It requires the Slint C++ library to be built,
which isn't done by default. Build it explicitly before running the tests:
cargo build --lib -p slint-cpp
cargo test -p test-driver-cpp
The Node.js tests are contained in the test-driver-nodejs
crate. The node integration will be run
automatically when running the tests:
cargo build -p test-driver-nodejs
For more details about the tests and how they are implemented, see testing.md.
The Slint C++ API is implemented as a normal cmake build:
mkdir cppbuild && cd cppbuild
cmake -GNinja ..
cmake --build .
The build will call cargo to build the Rust libraries, and build the examples. To install the libraries and everything you need, use:
cmake --install .
You can pass -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
in the first cmake command in order to choose the installation location.
The Slint Node.js API is implemented as npm build. You can build it locally using the following command line:
cd api/node
npm install
To build your own project against the Git version of the Slint Node.js API, add the path to the api/node
folder
in the dependencies section of your package.json
:
"dependencies": {
"slint-ui": "/path/to/api/node"
},
Slint can be cross-compiled to different target architectures and environments. For the Rust build we
have had a good experience using cross
. For convenience we're
including a Cross.toml
configuration file for cross
in the source tree along with Docker containers that
allow targeting a Debian ARMv7 and ARMv8 based Distribution with X11 or Wayland, out of the box. If you want to use the default Cross containers or your own, make sure the dependencies are in the container.
This includes for example the Raspberry Pi OS. Using the following steps you can run the examples on a pi:
cross build --target armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf --workspace --exclude slint-node --exclude pyslint --release
scp target/armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf/release/printerdemo [email protected]:.
Finally on a shell on the Pi:
DISPLAY=:0 ./printerdemo
See the examples folder for examples to build, run and test.
Slint also includes a viewer tool that can load .slint
files dynamically at run-time. It's a
cargo-integrated binary and can be run directly on the .slint
files, for example:
cargo run --release --bin slint-viewer -- examples/printerdemo/ui/printerdemo.slint
The Slint documentation consists of five parts:
- The tutorials
- The Rust API documentation
- The C++ API documentation
- The Node.js API documentation
- The DSL documentation
There are three tutorials built with mdbook, one for each of the three languages supported by Slint.
Prerequisites:
mdbook build docs/tutorial/rust
mdbook build docs/tutorial/cpp
mdbook build docs/tutorial/node
Prerequisites:
Use the following command line to build the documentation for the Slint DSL using rustdoc
to the target/slintdocs/html
folder:
cargo xtask slintdocs --show-warnings
Run the following command to generate the documentation using rustdoc in the target/doc/
sub-folder:
RUSTDOCFLAGS="--html-in-header=$PWD/docs/resources/slint-docs-preview.html --html-in-header=$PWD/docs/resources/slint-docs-highlight.html" cargo doc --no-deps --features slint/document-features,slint/log
Note: --html-in-header
arguments passed to rustdoc via RUSTDOCFLAGS
are used to enable syntax highlighting and live-preview for Slint example snippets.
Prerequisites:
Run the following command to generate the documentation using sphinx/exhale/breathe/doxygen/myst_parser in the target/cppdocs
sub-folder:
cargo xtask cppdocs
Run the following commands from the /api/node
sub-folder to generate the docs using typedoc in the /api/node/docs
sub-folder:
npm install
npm run docs