Slint support for QNX8?

[romaniulian]

Hello everyone,
I started looking over Slint for one of my projects and I was wondering if I can use it on QNX8.
I saw in the git history some commits related to QNX build, but I didn't find some documentation on how to get an application, developed with the framework, compiled for QNX.
Is there any documentation available?

[tronical]

We don't have QNX 8 support out of the box, i.e. a platform implementation. We have built Slint based projects with commercial customers on top of QNX 7 and QNX 8 with and without GPU acceleration - based on Ferrocene as compiler. Unfortunately the corresponding platform integrations can't be open source at this point as they rely on proprietary libraries that sit on top of QNX. But in principle you should be able to compile Slint for QNX and build your own platform implementation with the software renderer, but you'll have to figure out how to get the pixels to the window (or literally qnx's screen component).

What kind of project do you have in mind?

[romaniulian]

I don't have yet a clear idea for the project, but from a high point perspective I want to have:

• frontend running on QNX(which I would like to be in Rust with Slint)
• one backend running on QNX which would help me control the GPIO ports from the frontend
• another backend running on a Yocto guest which runs on top of QNX hypervisor.

In my initial plan I wanted the frontend to run in a Yocto guest(because there the things seems more straightforward with Slint), but for now displaying from guests is not supported QNX8 through virtio.

Before writing this question I was thinking of generating Rust bindings of QNX Screen Framework C library and use them as a backend for Slint, so I think this is what I will try from today. In the meantime, while waiting for an answer here, I did something using LVGL and I managed to create a demo UI with it and display it using QNX Screen API.

Also thanks for mentioning about Ferrocene compiler. I didn't know about it until now and it will come in handy for my project as I try to build it with safety aspects in mind.

[tronical]

Right, if you have screen bindings then it should be straightforward. You can also use the https://docs.rs/slint/latest/slint/platform/femtovg_renderer/trait.OpenGLInterface.html GL interface by implementing it for QNX's egl tied to a screen window and then use the femtovg renderer. That'll give you hardware acceleration. Otherwise you can use the Slint software renderer.