Is Gtk.jl mature and stable on macOS?

General Usage
1

I am trying to determine what GUI toolkit to use in Julia. I want to avoid pursuing a toolkit which is unstable and prone to crashes forcing me to switch toolkit midstream.

I am interested in using Gtk but I know from the past that it has often not been great on macOS. I get simple toy examples to work fine, but I am uncertain about how stable things will be with more complex GUIs. E.g. I have noticed that Glade UI builder which I installed through Homebrew is prone to crashing very easily.

My worry is that this is not merely a Glade problem but an underlying problem with Gtk, which I will hit as well as I build a more complex solution. Can anyone who has used Gtk on macOS verify whether Gtk works well?

If it doesn’t what is the recommended solution which is most mature and stable?

I am including description of my Glade errors. While not related directly to Julia, it may inform you whether this is a general problem with Gtk on Mac or likely Glade specific.

In the console I get this when a crash happens:

$ GladeUI-Message: 16:16:54.601: Glade needs artwork; a default icon will be used for the following classes:
    GtkFileChooserNative    needs an icon named 'widget-gtk-filechoosernative'
    GtkApplicationWindow    needs an icon named 'widget-gtk-applicationwindow'
    GThemedIcon needs an icon named 'widget-gtk-themedicon'
    GFileIcon   needs an icon named 'widget-gtk-fileicon'
    GladeInstantiableGtkBin needs an icon named 'widget-gtk-bin'
GladeUI-Message: 16:16:54.633: No DevHelp installed on your system, devhelp feature will be disabled.
** Message: 16:16:55.237: No TLS support in GIO, Registration & User Survey disabled. (missing glib-networking package)
fish: 'glade &' terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

While the Apple Problem report dialog gives the following info (I have just extracted what I thought might be useful):

Crashed Thread:        0

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000001112337d8
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [15386]

VM Regions Near 0x1112337d8:
    CoreAnimation               10d297000-10d434000    [ 1652K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV  
--> 
    STACK GUARD              70000291a000-70000291b000 [    4K] ---/rwx SM=NUL  stack guard for thread 1

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   libobjc.A.dylib                 0x00007fff202837a9 0x7fff2027d000 + 26537
1   libgdk-3.0.dylib                0x0000000101146ec0 _gdk_quartz_display_queue_events + 1360
2   libgdk-3.0.dylib                0x000000010114987a gdk_event_dispatch + 26
3   libglib-2.0.0.dylib             0x000000010087603e g_main_context_dispatch + 366
4   libglib-2.0.0.dylib             0x00000001008763bd g_main_context_iterate + 525
5   libglib-2.0.0.dylib             0x0000000100876702 g_main_loop_run + 258
6   libgtk-3.0.dylib                0x0000000100a4b74e gtk_dialog_run + 350
7   glade
2

The error message sounds like the installation is missing icons and a library, both problems could be dependent on how the Gtk.jl is installled (-> issue for Gtk.jl and binaryProvider).

3

This is a homebrew issue not a Gtk.jl issue. Gtk.jl runs fine on OSX. I have that same issue with glade on OSX and therefore usually develop my applications on Linux.

4

i see. Did you file an issue to brew? (and would it make sense to include a glade into binaryProvider for Gtk.jl?)

5

And would it make sense to include a glade into binaryProvider for Gtk.jl?

If possible: yes!

1 Like
6

Thanks, very useful to know. I can use Glade on Linux if I absolutely need to access it then. The rest of the development I can do on Mac.

Anyway I have seen people recommending not using Glade for Gtk4 and writing XML gui files by hand instead. It sure what Gtk version Gtk.jl wraps through.

7

Gtk3. Gkt4 will come at some point but don’t expect this to be soon.

It’s a matter of taste whether to write the xml files by hand, with glade, or creating the widgets in Julia. I do much with glade since it allows me to move widgets around without changing the code. ImageView on the other hand was written without glade/builder.

1 Like