GUI Programming QuickStart With FLTK

[lefticus]

https://github.com/fltk/fltk
https://www.fltk.org/index.php

[lefticus]

FLTK Quick Start

Current Status

https://github.com/lefticus/fltk_example

• MSVC cl.exe doesn't like FLTK because of deprecated POSIX strdup.
• FLTK examples use naked new
• We can safely use make_unique instead
• Did have to poke at codecov to get things working
• Had to install extra Ubuntu dependencies

What we did wrong

• Should have created a new branch for this setup, then squashed the changes

What went well

• The "use template process"
• CPM for installing dependencies
• We were working in about 15 minutes
• Windows, Linux, and MacOS builds of a GUI program!
• Auto packaging should work!!

What could be better

• Sometimes cpp depencies installer tool that we use times out
• We had to take about 1.5 hrs to get the CI happy

TODO For Anyone Interested:

• More complete example
• We need to fix MSVC builds.

[fcolecumberri]

Considering how FLTK is probably one of the ugliest GUI toolkits. Wouldn't Qt or Gtk be a better choice.

Also Qt has Qt-Designer and Gtk has Glade. Both allow a separation of the UX from the backend.

[lefticus]

Too late: already recorded.

But also, FLTK stands out as one that's relatively easy to build and deploy on all platforms. Gtk and Qt are not that. (I've used both)

[lefticus]

Coming in Ep493