Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By : Andrew Williams
Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By: Andrew Williams

Overview of this book

Go is often compared to C++ when it comes to low-level programming and implementations that require faster processing, such as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In fact, many claim that Go is superior to C++ in terms of its concurrency and ease of use. Most graphical application toolkits, though, are still written using C or C++, and so they don't enjoy the benefits of using a modern programming language such as Go. This guide to programming GUIs with Go 1.11 explores the various toolkits available, including UI, Walk, Shiny, and Fyne. The book compares the vision behind each project to help you pick the right approach for your project. Each framework is described in detail, outlining how you can build performant applications that users will love. To aid you further in creating applications using these emerging technologies, you'll be able to easily refer to code samples and screenshots featured in the book. In addition to toolkit-specific discussions, you'll cover more complex topics, such as how to structure growing graphical applications, and how cross-platform applications can integrate with each desktop operating system to create a seamless user experience. By delving into techniques and best practices for organizing and scaling Go-based graphical applications, you'll also glimpse Go's impressive concurrency system. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to distribute to the main desktop marketplaces and distribution channels. By the end of this book, you'll be a confident GUI developer who can use the Go language to boost the performance of your applications.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Comparison of GUI Toolkits
Index

Packaging and distribution


Packaging a native graphical application for multiple platforms can introduce additional challenges. A native GUI will typically have to adapt to the current platform and it will need to include package metadata to integrate as expected on a user's desktop. Most graphical apps also require many assets to be embedded into the release package. Additionally, the semantics of installing an application vary from one operating system to another. macOS, for example, expects that applications are packaged as a bundle that can be dragged (or moved) from the Downloads folder into the Applications folder. Windows users will expect a single executable file that will run once downloaded, or an installer that can set up the components required. The platforms you aim to distribute on may impact your application capabilities or the resources it can be packaged with, and we want to do this using a single code base for ease of maintenance.

In recent years, we have seen many platforms...