Building modern desktop apps in Go

by Serge Zaitsev
At: FOSDEM 2019
video.fosdem.o...
I'll show how to quickly build a simple desktop app with Go+HTML5, that doesn't look like it's from the 90s, neither it feels bloated like Electron. User interfaces have come a long way from punch cards and command line to post-WIMP era with touch screens and voice input. Modern UI is expected to be fast, responsive and smooth, with high-quality typefaces, rich images, animations, accessibility. HTML5 handles it all very well, and with GPU acceleration it has decent visual performance. Go may have stated itself as a language for writing services, but with Redux architecture GUI apps are not much different from request/response model. Having excellent performance, Go is a perfect fit for writing core app logic. The only thing that's missing is a link between HTML5 and Go, so that Go code could be called from the UI, and UI could be manipulated from Go.
HTML5 is often considered heavy because it requires a browser engine. We don't want to ship browser runtime with each and every app. One solution is to reuse the native OS runtime. Another is to use some pre-installed browser in the standalone app mode. Both end up with small, fast, self-contained binaries that are easy to build and to distribute.
I would like to briefly explain how each approach works, and how to choose one that fits better for your needs.
I'll introduce Webview1 and Lorca2 libraries and show how to build a quick desktop app in Go with either of those. I'll cover bootstrapping the new app, communication between Go and UI layer, debugging UI, building and packaging the app. I'll do the demonstration on Linux, but will show how to prepare the same app for Windows/MacOS.
Room: UD2.120 (Chavanne)
Scheduled start: 2019-02-02 11:00:00+01

[@danijelpremus5177]

I'm using Go, but for desktop GUI application my favorite is Lazarus. Same as in Go you can compile the same source code for different platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows...) and you get a native single binary executable.

[@marc_frank]

but it looks so old and the multi form ide is annoying

[@NatoBoram]

"Electron is bad" \*Promotes another Chromium Frankenstein*

[@GergiH]

Yea, I fail to see the reason for this. If someone has any idea why this is better than Electron feel free to elaborate since I'm genuinely curious since this seems like the same thing (besides it uses the OS's browser which I wouldn't really call a big of an improvement from Electron if any)

[@JimmyLinPhD]

Gergely H These solutions use the web browser you already have on your computer. So the download size is much smaller, since you don’t have to ship an entire HTML engine as well. If you assume that launching a HTML renderer built into the OS takes less resources than launching an external one, then Webview should take up less resources too.

[@llothar68]

@@GergiH Because Go > JS .... at least this is his opinion, not mine

[@JonathanRintala]

Great video!

[@llothar68]

This is fixing problems that aren't the problems of modern desktop GUI applications. It doesn't fix the problem of large data sets in models, multithreading, complicated text (Atom had to implemented the all in C++ and using HTML just like a Pango Text Layout replacement). The only problem with modern desktop GUI apps is that you barely find good developers who know to program GTK, WinUI3 and Cocoa.

[@codelucky]

1973 there were no GUI. Please correct it.

[@RobertLugg]

What is the baseline library for writing GUI apps in Go? For instance, for Python it is Tkinter.

[@tillorrly1128]

None. Probably because Go has it's roots in server backends.

[@tetlamed]

None, because Go likes having a small, minimal standard library and leaving the rest of the control to the user

[@morgengabe1]

@@tetlamed tkinter isn’t in python’s standard library.

[@tetlamed]

@@morgengabe1 I think you might've tagged the wrong person here

[@morgengabe1]

@@tetlamed No, I believe it is you who are the one accusing my beloved python of failing to omit chaff from its standard library. Humph! And a big finger wag at you!

[@emilie1977]

"Electron is bad" exactly

[@FPChris]

Make Lorca for pure C

[@eddie2378]

I would rather combine Golang with QtQuick/QML.

[@bitcode_]

he said java, lol i got to agree that this person is much smarter than me, and I could not do public speaking... but he said java

[@Snailsxd]

ikr

[@christophernuzzi2780]

Apple could not have published their human-computer interaction guidelines in 1973 - Apple didn't exist yet! Does this guy mean Xerox? Or maybe Apple in 1983?

[@ER_aka_RAM]

Don’t be condescending douche .... it was already in the works after PARC, which didn’t have a clue or the vision of what was to come. So no, Serge wouldn’t refer to Xerox as the WIMP source. You’re stuck on the mouse 🤦🏽‍♂️

[@scottstensland]

yes he meant Apple in 1983 my first mac was 1985

[@farjona]

'Electron is bad.'...... owhkee

[@vitisanity]

No drag n drop for GUI, forget it.

[@mstroven]

The presenter doesn't seem to know much about the actual history of mobile devices and user interfaces... Have a look at Newton circa 1994.

[@johnemory7485]

F1 not helpful? Well, in comparison to a man page, I suppose it's not, but that wasn't the claim. If you can't take time to read about the program you're using, you're either being lazy or you're under 10 years old. When I was that young, I had time to just explore and learn on my own time. After that, man pages or bust.

[@llothar68]

Man pages or any documentation doesn't work well with 30 day sprints in the modern agile world.