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

Getting started with Go-GTK


Getting up and running with Go-GTK involves installing the GTK+ library on your system (if it's not already installed), setting up CGo, and downloading the Go bindings. Users of applications built using Go-GTK will need the GTK+ library installed on their computer and so the Installing GTK+ section may need to be included in your documentation.

Prerequisites

Compiling against the GTK+ library will require CGo to be set up; if this isn't already done, you can work through the Appendix, Installation Details.

 

 

Installing GTK+

Using a package manager to install the GTK+ library is the easiest way to get it set up, as it'll also configure your development environment.

macOS

The recommended approach with macOS is to install it using Homebrew. If you haven't previously set up Homebrew, you can simply follow the instructions at https://brew.sh. Once Homebrew is installed, you can simply open a Terminal and run brew install gtk+.

Windows

Windows doesn't come with a standard package...