Looking for a simple GUI library that works with Vulkan on SDL2

[Danny Arends]

On Thursday, 20 February 2025 at 06:53:26 UTC, IchorDev wrote:
> On Wednesday, 19 February 2025 at 15:21:19 UTC, Danny Arends 
> wrote:
>> I've tried several different bindings to IMgui, however, none 
>> seem to work and seem abandoned to me (the most recent updated 
>> one 'bindbc-imgui' was updated 3 years ago).
>
> Actually, I have been working on an update to BindBC-ImGui for 
> a long time. It now directly interfaces with ImGui's C++ API. 
> It's 99% finished, I just have a few bug bears to sort out 
> before I release it.
>
> You can clone the most recent version [from 
> here](https://github.com/ichordev/bindbc-imgui) and use `dub 
> add-local ./bindbc-imgui 1.0.0` on it so that dub knows where 
> it is. Then in your dub recipe, add `bindbc-imgui` version 
> `~>1.0` to `dependencies`, set its sub-configuration to 
> `static-SDL2-Vulkan`, and add `imgui` to your `libs`.
> You will have to build Dear ImGui as a library, including any 
> backends you want. Here's an example with the SDL2 backend & 
> clang:
> ```sh
> mkdir build
> cd build
> clang++ -c -g -fPIC -std=c++11 -I../ -I/path/to/SDL2 
> -I/usr/local/include/ ../imgui*.cpp \
> 	../backends/imgui_impl_sdl2.cpp
> clang++ -fPIC -std=c++11 -shared -o libimgui.so imgui.o 
> imgui_demo.o imgui_draw.o imgui_tables.o imgui_widgets.o 
> imgui_impl_sdl2.o -lSDL2
> ```
> I've had weird linker issues when building Dear ImGui as a 
> static library, so I recommend trying to build it as a shared 
> library to start off with.
>
>> But this got me wondering, what is the state of the art GUI 
>> library in D, when I am using modern OpenGL or Vulkan?
>>
>> Does anyone have any tips or tricks on how to achieve a basic 
>> GUI ? (without writing yet another GUI library binding from 
>> scratch)
>
> There isn't one, unfortunately. I've done some work on an API 
> for one, but hit a few snags, so it's not the top of my 
> priorities right now. 
> [Fluid](https://code.dlang.org/packages/fluid) looks like a 
> pretty good option if you want a native D library, but you 
> would have to write an SDL/Vulkan backend for it, since it only 
> comes with a Raylib 5 backend. It's more of a serious GUI 
> library than Dear ImGui though.

Thanks,

Running into some weird linker issues within 
bindbc.common.codegen:

```
/usr/bin/ld: 
/home/danny/.dub/cache/betterct/~master/build/betterC-debug-gZx8lRyN8EaQ6hq_UuhHCw/betterct.o:(.data._D39TypeInfo_S6bindbc6common7codegen6FnBind6__initZ+0x30): undefined reference to `_D6bindbc6common7codegen6FnBind9__xtoHashFNbNeKxSQBvQBrQBnQBiZm'
/usr/bin/ld: 
/home/danny/.dub/cache/betterct/~master/build/betterC-debug-gZx8lRyN8EaQ6hq_UuhHCw/betterct.o:(.data._D39TypeInfo_S6bindbc6common7codegen6FnBind6__initZ+0x38): undefined reference to `_D6bindbc6common7codegen6FnBind11__xopEqualsMxFKxSQBwQBsQBoQBjZb'
```

while the individual components seem to build without issue:

```
     Building bindbc-common 1.0.5: building configuration [yesBC]
     Building bindbc-loader 1.1.5: building configuration [yesBC]
     Building bindbc-imgui ~master: building configuration 
[dynamic]
     Building bindbc-sdl 1.5.2: building configuration [dynamicBC]
```