Overview

Enables software rendering via drawing an image straight to a window.

Softbuffer integrates with the raw-window-handle crate to allow writing pixels to a window in a cross-platform way while using the very high quality dedicated window management libraries that are available in the Rust ecosystem.

Alternatives

minifb also allows putting a 2D buffer/image on a window in a platform-independent way. Minifb's approach to doing window management itself, however, is problematic code duplication. We already have very high quality libraries for this in the Rust ecosystem (such as winit), and minifb's implementation of window management is not ideal. For example, it occasionally segfaults and is missing key features such as setting a window icon on some platforms. While adding these features to minifb would be possible, it makes more sense to use the standard window handling systems instead.

What about pixels? Pixels accomplishes a very similar goal to Softbuffer, however there are two key differences. Pixels provides some capacity for GPU-accelerated post-processing of what is displayed, while Softbuffer does not. Due to not having this post-processing, Softbuffer does not rely on the GPU or hardware accelerated graphics stack in any way, and is thus more portable to installations that do not have access to hardware acceleration (e.g. VMs, older computers, computers with misconfigured drivers). Softbuffer should be used over pixels when its GPU-accelerated post-processing effects are not needed.

License & Credits

This library is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, just like minifb and rust. Significant portions of code were taken from the minifb library to do platform-specific work.

Platform support:

Some, but not all, platforms supported in raw-window-handle are supported by Softbuffer. Pull requests are welcome to add new platforms! Nonetheless, all major desktop platforms that winit uses on desktop are supported.

For now, the priority for new platforms is:

1. to have at least one platform on each OS working (e.g. one of Win32 or WinRT, or one of Xlib, Xcb, and Wayland) and
2. for that one platform on each OS to be the one that winit uses.

(PRs will be accepted for any platform, even if it does not follow the above priority.)

Platform
Android NDK	❌
AppKit	✅
Orbital	✅
UIKit	✅
Wayland	✅
Web	✅
Win32	✅
WinRT	❌
XCB	✅
Xlib	✅

✅: Present
❔: Immature
❌: Absent

WebAssembly

To run an example with the web backend: cargo run-wasm --example winit

Example

use std::num::NonZeroU32;
use std::rc::Rc;
use winit::event::{Event, WindowEvent};
use winit::event_loop::{ControlFlow, EventLoop};
use winit::window::Window;

#[path = "../examples/utils/winit_app.rs"]
mod winit_app;

fn main() {
    let event_loop = EventLoop::new().unwrap();

    let mut app = winit_app::WinitAppBuilder::with_init(
        |elwt| {
            let window = {
                let window = elwt.create_window(Window::default_attributes());
                Rc::new(window.unwrap())
            };
            let context = softbuffer::Context::new(window.clone()).unwrap();

            (window, context)
        },
        |_elwt, (window, context)| softbuffer::Surface::new(context, window.clone()).unwrap(),
    )
    .with_event_handler(|(window, _context), surface, event, elwt| {
        elwt.set_control_flow(ControlFlow::Wait);

        match event {
            Event::WindowEvent { window_id, event: WindowEvent::RedrawRequested } if window_id == window.id() => {
                let Some(surface) = surface else {
                    eprintln!("RedrawRequested fired before Resumed or after Suspended");
                    return;
                };
                let (width, height) = {
                    let size = window.inner_size();
                    (size.width, size.height)
                };
                surface
                    .resize(
                        NonZeroU32::new(width).unwrap(),
                        NonZeroU32::new(height).unwrap(),
                    )
                    .unwrap();

                let mut buffer = surface.buffer_mut().unwrap();
                for index in 0..(width * height) {
                    let y = index / width;
                    let x = index % width;
                    let red = x % 255;
                    let green = y % 255;
                    let blue = (x * y) % 255;

                    buffer[index as usize] = blue | (green << 8) | (red << 16);
                }

                buffer.present().unwrap();
            }
            Event::WindowEvent {
                event: WindowEvent::CloseRequested,
                window_id,
            } if window_id == window.id() => {
                elwt.exit();
            }
            _ => {}
        }
    });

    event_loop.run_app(&mut app).unwrap();
}

MSRV Policy

This crate's Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is 1.70. Changes to the MSRV will be accompanied by a minor version bump.

As a tentative policy, the upper bound of the MSRV is given by the following formula:

min(sid, stable - 3)

Where sid is the current version of rustc provided by Debian Sid, and stable is the latest stable version of Rust. This bound may be broken in case of a major ecosystem shift or a security vulnerability.

Orbital is not covered by this MSRV policy, as it requires a Rust nightly toolchain to compile.

All crates in the rust-windowing organizations have the same MSRV policy.

Changelog

See the changelog for a list of this package's versions and the changes made in each version.