Petros Amoiridis
714481073d
Closes #36206 Disclaimer: I did use AI for help to end up with this proposed solution. 😅 ## Observed behavior of native apps on macOS (like Safari) I first did a quick research on how Safari behaves on macOS, and here's what I have found: 1. Safari seems to position new windows with an offset based on the currently active window 2. It keeps opening new windows with an offset until the new window cannot fit the display bounds horizontally, vertically or both. 3. When it cannot fit horizontally, the new window opens at x=0 (y=active window's y) 4. When it cannot fit vertically, the new window opens at y=0 (x=active window's x) 5. When it cannot fit both horizontally and vertically, the new window opens at x=0 and y=0 (top left). 6. At any moment if I activate a different Safari window, the next new window is offset off of that 7. If I resize the active window and open a new window, the new window has the same size as the active window So, I implemented the changes based on those observations. I am not sure if touching `gpui/src/window.rs` is the way to go. I am open to feedback and direction here. I am also not sure if making my changes platform (macOS) specific, is the right thing to do. I reckoned that Linux and Windows have different default behaviors, and the original issue mentioned macOS. But, likewise, I am open to take a different approach. ## Tests I haven't included tests for such change, as it seems to me a bit difficult to properly test this, other than just doing a manual integration test. But if you would want them for such a change, happy to try including them. ## Alternative approach I also did some research on macOS native APIs that we could use instead of trying to make the calculations ourselves, and I found `NSWindow.cascadeTopLeftFromPoint` which seems to be doing exactly what we want, and more. It probably takes more things into consideration and thus it is more robust. We could go down that road, and add it to `gpui/src/platform/mac/window.rs` and then use it for new window creation. Again, if that's what you would do yourselves, let me know and I can either change the implementation here, or open a new pull request and let you decide which one would you would like to pursue. ## Video showing the behavior https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f802a864-7504-47ee-8c6b-8d9b55474899 🙇♂️ Release Notes: - Improved macOS new window stacking
Welcome to GPUI!
GPUI is a hybrid immediate and retained mode, GPU accelerated, UI framework for Rust, designed to support a wide variety of applications.
Getting Started
GPUI is still in active development as we work on the Zed code editor, and is still pre-1.0. There will often be breaking changes between versions. You'll also need to use the latest version of stable Rust and be on macOS or Linux. Add the following to your Cargo.toml:
gpui = { version = "*" }
Everything in GPUI starts with an Application. You can create one with Application::new(), and kick off your application by passing a callback to Application::run(). Inside this callback, you can create a new window with App::open_window(), and register your first root view. See gpui.rs for a complete example.
Dependencies
GPUI has various system dependencies that it needs in order to work.
macOS
On macOS, GPUI uses Metal for rendering. In order to use Metal, you need to do the following:
- Install Xcode from the macOS App Store, or from the Apple Developer website. Note this requires a developer account.
Ensure you launch Xcode after installing, and install the macOS components, which is the default option.
-
Install Xcode command line tools
xcode-select --install -
Ensure that the Xcode command line tools are using your newly installed copy of Xcode:
sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
The Big Picture
GPUI offers three different registers depending on your needs:
-
State management and communication with
Entity's. Whenever you need to store application state that communicates between different parts of your application, you'll want to use GPUI's entities. Entities are owned by GPUI and are only accessible through an owned smart pointer similar to anRc. See theapp::contextmodule for more information. -
High level, declarative UI with views. All UI in GPUI starts with a view. A view is simply an
Entitythat can be rendered, by implementing theRendertrait. At the start of each frame, GPUI will call this render method on the root view of a given window. Views build a tree ofelements, lay them out and style them with a tailwind-style API, and then give them to GPUI to turn into pixels. See thedivelement for an all purpose swiss-army knife of rendering. -
Low level, imperative UI with Elements. Elements are the building blocks of UI in GPUI, and they provide a nice wrapper around an imperative API that provides as much flexibility and control as you need. Elements have total control over how they and their child elements are rendered and can be used for making efficient views into large lists, implement custom layouting for a code editor, and anything else you can think of. See the
elementmodule for more information.
Each of these registers has one or more corresponding contexts that can be accessed from all GPUI services. This context is your main interface to GPUI, and is used extensively throughout the framework.
Other Resources
In addition to the systems above, GPUI provides a range of smaller services that are useful for building complex applications:
-
Actions are user-defined structs that are used for converting keystrokes into logical operations in your UI. Use this for implementing keyboard shortcuts, such as cmd-q. See the
actionmodule for more information. -
Platform services, such as
quit the apporopen a URLare available as methods on theapp::App. -
An async executor that is integrated with the platform's event loop. See the
executormodule for more information., -
The
[gpui::test]macro provides a convenient way to write tests for your GPUI applications. Tests also have their own kind of context, aTestAppContextwhich provides ways of simulating common platform input. Seeapp::test_contextandtestmodules for more details.
Currently, the best way to learn about these APIs is to read the Zed source code, ask us about it at a fireside hack, or drop a question in the Zed Discord. We're working on improving the documentation, creating more examples, and will be publishing more guides to GPUI on our blog.