Rust cross-platform GPUI components

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived impact on Rust UI landscape

  • Many see this as one of the most complete Rust UI component sets so far, rivaling or surpassing popular crates (iced, egui, dioxus, slint) in component breadth.
  • The showcase/gallery and the Longbridge desktop app are praised as “real app” quality, smooth, and Electron-beating in responsiveness.
  • Some note that GPUI itself is battle‑tested via the Zed editor and Longbridge Pro, implying far more real-world usage than most Rust UI stacks, even if this specific component library is new.

“Enterprise‑ready” and real‑world Rust GUI experience

  • Several people report building complex, polished desktop apps with iced or egui (including trading apps, CAD‑like scientific tools, and internal “enterprise” tools).
  • There’s disagreement on what “enterprise‑ready” means:
    – For some, it’s “good enough that customers don’t complain.”
    – For others, it implies long‑term maintainability, team development, and shrink‑wrapped product polish.
  • Iced and egui are generally seen as capable but often require “elbow grease” (custom widgets, themes, Elm-style architecture) to reach high polish.

Dependencies, build times, and technical tricks

  • The ~900‑crate dependency graph alarms some; concerns center on compile times and developer experience.
  • Others counter that incremental builds are fast on modern hardware and describe techniques to mitigate costs:
    • Precompiled “core runtime” in a dynamic library.
    • Use of faster linkers (lld/mold) and tools like Dioxus Subsecond for subsecond hot‑patching.
  • Binary sizes of ~10–15 MB for full‑feature Rust GUIs are reported as typical and tunable down with size‑oriented builds.

“Native” vs web, platform integration, and theming

  • GPUI is “native” in the sense of non‑web, GPU‑rendered UI (Metal/DirectX/Vulkan), not in the sense of using OS widgets.
  • This raises usual tradeoffs:
    – Pro: performance, consistent look across platforms, richer custom design.
    – Con: must reimplement things like file pickers, menus, and system chrome, or delegate to GTK/Qt/portals on Linux.
  • Some argue native file dialogs and minimal OS integration are still strongly desirable; others note that in 2025 many mainstream apps already ship custom chrome and styling.

Accessibility concerns

  • Multiple commenters say accessibility is their first question for any new UI toolkit.
  • GPUI’s docs mention ARIA‑style accessibility, and accessibility is on its roadmap, but Zed is currently opaque to screen readers, so expectations are cautious.
  • Some contrast this with toolkits explicitly prioritizing accessibility (Slint, Qt, possibly future Iced).

Comparisons to other ecosystems (Qt, Slint, game engines)

  • The comparison table is criticized as biased or inaccurate regarding Qt (licensing, size, themeability, features like syntax highlighting).
  • There’s broader discussion about Rust GUI vs mature C++ stacks (Qt, VCL/LCL). Many feel Rust is still far from that level of breadth and tooling (especially visual designers).
  • In game dev, Fyrox vs Bevy becomes a proxy debate: hype and ECS enthusiasm vs maturity, real shipped games, and iteration ergonomics in Rust.