GTK4

[HubKing]

Since this project has no Q&A page, I could not think of another place to ask a question but here. The description says "experimental". How "experimental" is this? Is it usable to create a working GUI app? Or is it like a proof-of-concept or an alpha version? I am not going to create a professional commercial app, but I am thinking of creating a GUI app that constantly updates statuses (like once per second) in a TreeView, for my own use. Something like a combination of the following example images: a tree structure on the left and a progress bar/a checkbox columns.

[bailuk]

There is a lot that already can be done with java-gtk. I'm not sure about GTK TreeView. Lists that are backed up with data models might not always work.

java-gtk comes with some list examples:

• https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk/blob/main/examples/src/main/java/examples/HugeList.java A ListView that uses a java index-adapter (ListIndex.java) as model. This way you can backup a list with any Java model.

• https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk/blob/main/examples/src/main/java/examples/gtk4_demo/AppLauncher.java A ListView that uses a gio ListModel and gio ListStore as model.

Experimental means that there are are continuous changes to the API and core of java-gtk. Just recently I switched from JNI to JNA to access the c-libraries. Its a big improvement but at the same time it broke a few things that did work before. And as you can see from this PR I abandoned GTK 3 in favor of GTK 4. So expect things to change a lot. (and hopefully improve)

Limitations I know of:

• Sub classing: Its possible but difficult. See: src/main/java/ch/bailu/gtk/bridge/ListIndex.java for an example
• Field access to records might work on some records but is broken on others. (this will be fixed)
• Varargs are not supported (can and probably will be implemented)
• Manual memory management: You must call unref() and destory() to prevent memory leaks. See also my comment here: https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk/issues/5 (I doubt that java-gtk ever will support GC)

My projects that use java-gtk

• https://github.com/bailuk/mapsforge: Port of mapsforge to gtk. It supports both bitmap and vector maps.
• https://github.com/bailuk/AAT/ (module aat-gtk) It's my main motivation for this project. The goal is to make this app work on a Pinephone.
• https://github.com/bailuk/gtk-meteo

[HubKing]

Thank you for the detailed reply. I think I will probably work for me. Anyway. I tried to test the gtk-meteo example, but ./gradlew mapsforge-map-gtk:install failed with:

Starting a Gradle Daemon (subsequent builds will be faster)

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

• Where: Build file '/home/user/Downloads/meteo/gtk-meteo-main/build.gradle.kts' line: 57

• What went wrong: Could not resolve all files for configuration ':runtimeClasspath'.

  Could not find org.mapsforge:mapsforge-map-gtk:master-SNAPSHOT. Searched in the following locations:

  • https://jitpack.io/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/maven-metadata.xml
  • https://jitpack.io/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/mapsforge-map-gtk-master-SNAPSHOT.pom
  • https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/maven-metadata.xml
  • https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/mapsforge-map-gtk-master-SNAPSHOT.pom
  • file:/home/user/.m2/repository/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/maven-metadata.xml
  • file:/home/user/.m2/repository/org/mapsforge/mapsforge-map-gtk/master-SNAPSHOT/mapsforge-map-gtk-master-SNAPSHOT.pom Required by: project :

• Try:

  Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.

• Get more help at https://help.gradle.org

BUILD FAILED in 1m 38s

[bailuk]

There is no release of the mapsforge port to GTK so you have to clone my fork: https://github.com/bailuk/mapsforge and run ./gradlew mapsforge-map-gtk:install there (this will build and install the dependency in your local maven repo). Then just run ./gradlew run from gtk-meteo.