xdialog

A cross-platform library for displaying native(-ish) dialogs in Rust. This library does not use native system dialogs, but instead creates its own dialog windows which are designed to look and feel like native dialogs. This allows for a simplified API and consistent behavior.

This is not a replacement for a proper GUI framework. It is meant to be used for CLI / background applications which occasionally need to show dialogs (such as alerts, or progress) to the user.

It's main use-case is for the Velopack application installation and update framework.

Features

• Cross-platform: works on Windows, MacOS, and Linux
• Zero dependencies on Windows or MacOS, only requires X11 on Linux.
• Very small size (as little as 100kb added to your binary with optimal settings)
• Simple and consistent API across all platforms

Installation

Add the following to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
xdialog = "0" # replace with the latest version

Or, run the following command:

cargo install xdialog

Usage

Since some platforms require UI to be run on the main thread, xdialog expects to own the main thread, and will launch your core application logic in another thread.

use xdialog::*;

fn main() -> i32 {
  XDialogBuilder::new().run(your_main_logic)
}

fn your_main_logic() -> i32 {

  // ... do something here

  let should_update_now = show_message_yes_no(
    "My App Incorporated",
    "New version available",
    "Would you like to to the new version now?",
    XDialogIcon::Warning,
  ).unwrap();

  if !should_update_now {
    return -1; // user declined the dialog
  }

  // ... do something here

  let progress = show_progress(
    "My App Incorporated",
    "Main instruction",
    "Body text",
    XDialogIcon::Information
  ).unwrap();

  progress.set_value(0.5).unwrap();
  progress.set_text("Extracting...").unwrap();
  std::thread::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(3));

  progress.set_value(1.0).unwrap();
  progress.set_text("Updating...").unwrap();
  std::thread::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(3));

  progress.set_indeterminate().unwrap();
  progress.set_text("Wrapping Up...").unwrap();
  std::thread::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(3));

  progress.close().unwrap();
  0 // return exit code
}

There are more examples in the examples directory.

cargo run --example various_options

Build Dependencies

This library uses fltk-rs for it's primary backend. By default, fltk-rs provides pre-compiled binaries for most platforms (win-x64, linux-x64, linux-arm64, mac-x64, mac-arm64).

If you are compiling for a platform that does not have pre-compiled binaries, you will need to disable the fltk-bundled feature and ensure that cmake is installed on your system.

[dependencies]
xdialog = { version = "0", default-features = false }