AppKid

AppKid is an open-source Application Development Framework heavily inspired by Apple’s AppKit and UIKit. It was started as a way to have convenient SDK to build UI applications for X11 enabled GNU/Linux environment. It is written completely in swift, using Vulkan as rendering backend and relies on X11 for window management and user input events.

import AppKid
import Foundation

class RootViewController: ViewController {
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        let label = Label(frame: CGRect(x: 0.0, y: 0.0, width: 320.0, height: 44.0))
        label.text = "Hello World"
        view.addSubview(label)
        label.center = CGPoint(x: 160.0, y: 120.0)
    }
}

@main
final class AppDelegate: ApplicationDelegate {
    func application(_: Application, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions _: [Application.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]? = nil) -> Bool {
        let window = Window(contentRect: CGRect(x: 0.0, y: 0.0, width: 320.0, height: 240.0))
        window.title = "Hello World"
        window.rootViewController = RootViewController()
        return true
    }
}

Getting started with AppKid in your project

AppKid depends on mulitple opensource projects. Below are the instructrions on how to set those up for Debian-based Linux distributions. RPM-Based instructions will be added some time later.

• Swift language

  • Get tarball package from swift.org, unpack it to some system directory like /opt/swift and update global $PATH variable

    sudo nano /etc/profile.d/10swift_path.sh

    paste this

    export PATH=/opt/swift/usr/bin:"${PATH}"`

    where /opt/swift is a path to your swift toolchain
  • Alternatively install swiftlang package via swiftlang builds (does not require extenting $PATH variable)

    wget -qO - https://archive.swiftlang.xyz/install.sh | sudo bash
    sudo apt install swiftlang -y

wget -qO - https://packages.lunarg.com/lunarg-signing-key-pub.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee -a /usr/share/keyrings/lunarg-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smumriak/AppKid/main/SupportingFiles/lunarg-vulkan-focal.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lunarg-vulkan-focal.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vulkan-sdk -y

sudo apt install -y \
    libx11-dev \
    libxi-dev \
    libwayland-dev \
    libcairo2-dev \
    libpango1.0-dev \
    libglib2.0-dev

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo ln -sf libpython3.10.so libpython3.8.so.1.0

let package = Package( name: “MyApp”, dependencies: [ .package( url: “https://github.com/smumriak/AppKid", branch: “main” ), ], targets: [ .executableTarget( name: “MyApp”, dependencies: [ .product(name: “AppKid”, package: “AppKid”) ]) ] )

## **Contributing**
Contributions are very welcome. Before you dive in it is recommended to [setup your local development environment](#development).

You can use provided sample applicatio called **AppKidDemo**, it is located in this repository and is one of the products. **AppKidDemo** is written in swift and provides a sample environment for **AppKid** development. 

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4306641/177026612-370dbd73-b414-4551-9341-9bd580389d53.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/4306641/177026512-4524bd22-895b-4205-ad9c-5b29251fdfa0.mp4

## Development
Before jumping straight into writing code there is some development setup required. Below are instructions on how to setup development environment for Debian-based Linux or for macOS
#### Debian-based Linux
- Follow steps from [Getting started with **AppKid** in your project](#getting-started-with-appkid-in-your-project) to get the dependencies installed
- <details>
    <summary>libclang for shaders preprocessing</summary>

    > **NOTE:** If you have no intention to modify internal **AppKid** shaders you can skip this step

    AppKid is using its own GLSL dialect for internal shaders. It is preprocessed via custom tool that is build on top of libclang.
    
    Install libclang itself
    ```bash
    sudo apt install -y \
        libclang-12-dev 
    ```
    Install provided package config file for libclang because llvm does not provide one:
    ```bash
    sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
    sudo wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smumriak/AppKid/main/SupportingFiles/clang.pc -O /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/clang.pc
    ```
  </details>

#### **macOS**
- Xcode via [AppStore](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835) or [developer.apple.com](https://developer.apple.com/download/more/)
- <details>
    <summary>XQuartz</summary>
    
    ```bash
    brew install xquartz
    ```
    </details>
- Vulkan SDK via [lunarg.com](https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home#mac)
- <details>
    <summary>PKG_CONFIG_PATH global variable</summary>

    Update global `PKG_CONFIG_PATH` variable so command line tools would have proper pkg-config search path:
    ```bash
    sudo nano /etc/profile
    ````
    paste this:
    ```bash
    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/X11/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
    ```
    Add a launchctl agent that will update environment variables per user session so Xcode could find all the pkg-config files needed to properly build projects:
    ```bash
    mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
    curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smumriak/AppKid/main/SupportingFiles/environment.plist -o ~/Library/LaunchAgents/environment.plist
    launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/environment.plist
    ```
    > **NOTE:** This file is not backed up by TimeMachine, so you probably want to extend this environment variable for command line tools in some other way

    </details>
- <details>
    <summary>Install other project dependencies:</summary>

    ```bash
    brew install \
        pkg-config \
        cairo \
        glib \
        pango
    ```
    </details>

### Building and running
All projects in this repository are using [Swift Package Manager](https://www.swift.org/package-manager/) exclusivelly. This means that building top level product is as easy as this
> **NOTE:** Since this is a monorepo for multiple projects at the moment it is recommended to use dedicated build directories by adding --build-path argument to swift commands

> **WARNING:** Running of apps built with **AppKid** on macOS is not possible and there's no plan to make it so

```bash
swift build --product AppKid

Same with running

swift run --product AppKid

There are additional scripts under Utilities directory with pre-defined building, running, cleaning and other commands.

WARNING: Building on macOS is broken at the moment because of the issue of using vulkan-sdk as C library in pure swift project

IDE

On Linux the recommended way to write code is to use VSCode or VSCodium IDE. This way you’ll get preconfigured LLDB configuration to build and run the AppKidDemo, full integration with Swift SourceKit LSP for syntax highlight, symbol navigation, automcompletion just like in Xcode and much more. It’s just convenient.

On macOS there is a choice between VSCode/VSCodium and Xcode.I recommend generating the Xcode project via swift package generate-xcodeproj and opening it because indexing and build target generation is just faster this way, but you can also open Packge.swift in Xcode and it will be pretty much the same user experience.

The generate-xcodeproj from swift package manager is deprecated. It does not receive updates anymore and is throwing a fatal error when it meets a plugin definition in Package.swift file. Opening Package.swift itself does not work really well anymore either as it’s just not showing any of the local submodules in Xcode sources tree.

There is a carefully crafter VSCode/VSCoium configuration provided in the root of the reporisotory, including launch configuration and a bunch of tasks for things like regenerating Vulkan entities interface conformance from Vulkan spec or rebuilding ContentAnimation shaders. For the best experience in VSCode/VSCodium it is highly recommended to install following extensions:

• Swift
• CodeLLDB
• Camel Case Navigation
• SwiftFormat
• Launch Configs
• change-case
• Shader languages support
• psioniq File Header

License

The code in this repository is distributed under Apache-2.0. Please check Contributing before creating a pull request

Acknowledgements

AppKid is making use of the following opensource projects:

• Swift Collections, Apache-2.0 license
• cglm, MIT license
• Swift Argument Parser, Apache-2.0 license
• XLMCoder, MIT license
• swift-tools-support-core, Apache-2.0 license
• Vulkan Memory Allocator, MIT license
• stb, MIT license
• Vulkan SDK, Apache-2.0 license
• libXlib, X11 variation of MIT license
• libwayland, MIT “Expat” license
• libCairo, LGPL-2.1 license
• libPango, LGPL-2.1 license
• libGlib, LGPL-2.1 license
• libclang, Apache-2.0 license with LLVM Exceptions