Krokiet

Krokiet is new Czkawka frontend written in Slint.

Different toolkit means different look, limitations and features, so you should not expect same features like in Czkawka Gtk 4 frontend(but of course I want implement most of the features from other project).

Usage

Krokiet should not have any special runtime requirements - it should work on almost any device non-antic device.

Prebuild binaries should work on Windows 10,11, Mac, Ubuntu 22.04/20.04 and similar(libheif version and czkawka_gui requires Ubuntu 22.04+, rest Ubuntu 20.04) - https://github.com/qarmin/czkawka/releases/

Compilation

On Ubuntu you need to install this dependencies:

sudo apt install libfontconfig-dev libfreetype-dev

Default compilation is done by cargo build --release and should work on most systems.

Currently rustc have problems in optimizing code generated by slint(~90000 lines of code with version 7.0.0, 8.0.0 should compile faster), so default release build usually take > 60 minutes.
As workaround you can use this command, which require nightly version of rust:

RUSTFLAGS="-Zmir-enable-passes=-ScalarReplacementOfAggregates" cargo +nightly build --release

The only exception is building skia renderer which is non default feature that can be enabled manually if you want to use it, that require on windows msvc compiler(not sure how to exactly install it).

Also skia renderer is written in C++ and uses on platforms like x86_64 and arm64 prebuild binaries, so if you are using different architecture, this library will be build from source, which can take a lot of time and require additional dependencies.

Additional Renderers

By default, only femtovg(opengl) and software renderer are enabled, but you can enable more renderers by compiling app with additional features.

Most of the users will want to use app with windowing system/compositor, so features starting with winit in name are recommended.

E.g.

cargo build --release --features "winit_skia_opengl"
cargo build --release --features "winit_software"

to run app with different renderers you need to use it, by adding SLINT_BACKEND environment

SLINT_BACKEND=winit-femtovg ./target/release/krokiet
SLINT_BACKEND=software ./target/release/krokiet
SLINT_BACKEND=skia ./target/release/krokiet # This uses now opengl - https://github.com/slint-ui/slint/discussions/3799

when you will use invalid/non-existing backend, app will show warning

slint winit: unrecognized renderer skia, falling back to FemtoVG

to check what is really used, add SLINT_DEBUG_PERFORMANCE=refresh_lazy,console,overlay env

SLINT_DEBUG_PERFORMANCE=refresh_lazy,console,overlay cargo run

should print something like

Slint: Build config: debug; Backend: software

Scaling application

If you have high DPI monitor, you may want to scale application. You can do it by setting SLINT_SCALE_FACTOR environment

SLINT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 cargo run 

Different theme

App was created with dark fluent theme in mind, but is possible to use light theme by setting SLINT_STYLE environment variable to fluent-light during compilation e.g.

SLINT_STYLE=fluent-light cargo run -- --path .

Slint supports also other themes, but they are not officially supported by this app and may be broken(but looks that cupertino looks quite good with current style).

SLINT_STYLE=cupertino-light cargo run -- --path .
SLINT_STYLE=cupertino-dark cargo run -- --path .
SLINT_STYLE=material-light cargo run -- --path .
SLINT_STYLE=material-dark cargo run -- --path .

How to help?

• Suggesting possible design changes in the gui - of course, they should be possible to be simply implemented in the slint keeping in mind the performance aspect as well
• Modifying user interface - gui is written in simple language similar to qml, that can be modified in vscode/web with live preview - slint live preview example
• Improving app rust code

Why Slint?

There are multiple reasons why I decided to use Slint as toolkit for Krokiet over other toolkits.

Since I don't have time to create really complex and good looking GUI, I needed a helper tool to create GUI not from Rust(I don't want to use different language, because this will make communication with czkawka_core harder) so I decided to not look at Iced which only allows to create GUI from Rust.

GTK and QT also I throw away due cross compilation problems caused mostly by using C/C++ internally. Using GTK in Czkawka was a reason why I started to find other toolkits.

Tauri - I don't really like to use Javascript because I already used it with Qt(C++) + QML + Typescript combination and I found that creating ui in such language may be simple at start but later any bigger changes cause a lot of runtime errors. Despite these problems, my next project(closed source), will just use Tauri + slint, because actually in that case it is rather the best option.

So only Slint left with its cons and pros.

License

Code is licensed under MIT license but entire project is licensed under GPL-3.0 license, due Slint license restrictions.

Name

Why Krokiet(eng. Croquette)?
Because I like croquettes(Polish version), the ones with meat, mushrooms wrapped in breadcrumbs... it makes my mouth water.
I considered also other dishes which I like to eat like pierogi, żurek, pączek, schabowy or zapiekanka.
This name should be a lot of easier to remember than czkawka or szyszka.