Skip to content

GAPS.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
68 lines (44 loc) · 4.87 KB

GAPS.md

File metadata and controls

68 lines (44 loc) · 4.87 KB

Perry Feature Requests — From Building a Real macOS App

We ported a production macOS SwiftUI app (multi-chain EVM transaction analyzer, ~40 views) to Perry to find what's missing. The data layer ported perfectly. All UI gaps surfaced by this port are now closed.

Perry version: 0.5.151 App: 32 modules, compiles to 25MB ARM64 binary Updated: 2026-04-22

Status

Category v0.2.155 v0.5.150 v0.5.151 Notes
Critical gaps 2 0 0 —
Important gaps 4 1 partial 0 Alert rich form shipped
Nice-to-have 3 1 partial 0 LazyVStack NSTableView-virtualized; string prefs typed
System API gaps 3 1 partial 0 Lifecycle hooks wired end-to-end
Total gaps 12 3 partial 0 All closed

Overall Perry readiness: ~80% → 100% against the gaps surfaced by this port.

Closed in v0.5.151

Alert rich form

alertWithButtons(title, message, buttons: string[], callback: (index: number) => void) now exists alongside the simple alert(title, message). On macOS it maps to NSAlert with one button per label and fires the callback with the 0-based index. Windows uses MessageBoxW (OK / OKCancel / YesNoCancel per count); GTK4 uses MessageDialog with add_button.

Latent bug found and fixed at the same time: the pre-existing 2-arg alert dispatch in PERRY_UI_TABLE pointed at the 4-arg perry_ui_alert runtime symbol, so alert("Info", "Done") was reading buttons_ptr + callback from uninitialized registers. Simple form now routes to a dedicated perry_ui_alert_simple(title, message) FFI.

String preferences

preferencesSet(key, value: string | number) / preferencesGet(key): string | number | undefined. The runtime already branched on the NaN-box tag to store/retrieve NSString vs NSNumber on all desktop backends — the types were the only missing piece.

App lifecycle hooks

onTerminate(cb) and onActivate(cb) are now callable from TypeScript. macOS PerryAppDelegate gained applicationWillTerminate: and applicationDidBecomeActive: overrides that invoke the registered callbacks; GTK4 and Windows were already wired (connect_shutdown/connect_activate and WM_DESTROY/WM_ACTIVATEAPP respectively). Test-mode exit (std::process::exit(0)) now also fires the terminate hook so CI coverage includes it.

LazyVStack virtualization

crates/perry-ui-macos/src/widgets/lazyvstack.rs is now an NSTableView-backed widget with a PerryLazyVStackDelegate (NSTableViewDataSource + NSTableViewDelegate). The user's (index) => Widget render closure is invoked lazily — for a 1000-row list, only ~15 rows are realized (the visible rect plus the small scroll buffer NSTableView prefetches). New lazyvstackSetRowHeight(handle, height) setter since NSTableView virtualization requires uniform row heights; default is 44pt. lazyvstackUpdate(handle, newCount) triggers reloadData which re-fetches only currently-visible rows.

GTK4 and Windows kept their eager-render implementations — true virtualization there is a tracked follow-up; set_row_height on those backends is a no-op.

What Perry Handles Well (v0.5.151)

Layout: VStack, HStack, ZStack, ScrollView, Spacer, Divider, Form, Section, NavigationStack, SplitView/FrameSplit Controls: Text, Button, TextField, SecureField, Toggle, Slider, Picker, Image, ImageFile, ProgressView Modal / chrome: Sheet (NSPanel), Alert + AlertWithButtons, Toolbar, multiple Windows Lists: LazyVStack with true NSTableView-based virtualization on macOS (eager-render on GTK4/Windows), plus Table, ForEach State: State<number> and State<string> with reactive binding, state.onChange(), stateBindTextfield, auto-reactive Text(\...${state.value}...`)**Widget APIs:** addChild, clearChildren, setHidden, setEnabled, setTooltip, setControlSize, setOnHover, setOnDoubleClick, animateOpacity, animatePosition, setTint, setSize **Text:** fontSize, fontWeight, color, selectable, fontFamily (including"monospaced") **System:** openURL, isDarkMode, preferencesSet/Get (both strings and numbers), clipboardRead/Write, openFileDialog, openFolderDialog, saveFileDialog, addKeyboardShortcut, context menus, Keychain, Notifications **App lifecycle:** onTerminate, onActivate **Data layer:** axios, better-sqlite3, fs, crypto, async/await, Promises — all via --enable-js-runtime`

Follow-ups (outside this port's scope)

  • GTK4 LazyVStack virtualization — GTK4's Gtk.ListView + Gtk.SignalListItemFactory is the natural backend; currently eager-renders.
  • Windows LazyVStack virtualization — Win32 ListView with LVS_OWNERDATA (virtual list) would be the equivalent; currently eager-renders.
  • iOS/tvOS/watchOS alert + lifecycle — the FFI shape is now unified; iOS's UIAlertController and UIApplicationDelegate hooks are straightforward follow-ups.