Show HN: A backend agnostic Ruby framework for building reactive desktop apps

1 month ago 3

A Ruby library for authoring GUI applications

Getting started

In your Gemfile

gem "hokusai-zero", "0.1.7"

In order to run an application, you will need to install a backend

Raylib

Install raylib >= 5.0
Write your app
Run app with RAYLIB_PATH=/libpath/for/libraylib.(so|dylib) ruby <your app>.rb

SDL2

Install the following deps
Write your app
Run app with SDL_PATH=/libpath/for/libsdl.(so|dylib) ruby <your app>.rb

Example counter application

require "hokusai" require "hokusai/backends/raylib" class Counter < Hokusai::Block template <<-EOF [template] vblock hblock label { :content="count" size="130" :color="count_color" } hblock vblock label { content="Add" @click="increment" } vblock label { content="Subtract" @click="decrement" } EOF uses( vblock: Hokusai::Blocks::Vblock, hblock: Hokusai::Blocks::Hblock, label: Hokusai::Blocks::Label, ) attr_accessor :count def increment(event) self.count += 1 end def decrement(event) self.count -= 1 end def count_color self.count > 0 ? [0,0,255] : [255,0,0] end def initialize(**args) @count = 0 super(**args) end end Hokusai::Backends::RaylibBackend.run(Counter) do |config| config.width = 500 config.height = 500 config.title = "Counter application" end

Development

The build tooling of this project is xmake. You will need it to compile dependencies and run demos.

Hokusai contains a tree-sitter grammar to parse templates, and uses md4c to parse markdown.

When compiling the C portion of hokusai, tree-sitter will be statically linked.

Requirements:

xmake to build dependencies
Ruby to run applications

Steps:

Download project
Install dependencies
- bundle install
- xmake q hoku-tree-sitter
- xmake q hoku-md4c
- For Raylib
  - xmake q raylib
- For SDL2
  - xmake q libsdl
  - xmake q libsdl_gfx
  - xmake q lbsdl_ttf
  - xmake q libsdl_image
Build grammar and ast code
- xmake b hokusai
Run specs
- xmake b -g test
Run a demo
- xmake demo counter