Building for Other Platforms

Another great feature of the fyne command-line tool is that it can package code for other platforms, just like the Go compiler. You can specify the operating systems that you want to bundle the app for, one at a time. For example:

> fyne package -os windows

Due to the graphical libraries required to compile (like the ones you installed at the beginning of the article), there are some additional requirements for cross-platform compilation. See the Fyne documentation for more information [4].

If you are familiar with a Docker or podman install, then you can use the fyne-cross [5] tool, which will handle all the complex developer setup process inside containers. As long as you have a container engine running, it should be as simple as:

> go install github.com/fyne-io/fyne-cross@latest
> fyne-cross android

Figure 6 shows how the same app will look when running on an iOS or Android mobile device. The package was created using fyne-cross and installed using standard developer tools.

Figure 6: The same app code shown here running on iOS.

Finally, if you are interested in automating your build for multiple platforms along with having the downloads hosted for you, check out build platform tools such as Geoffrey by Fyne Labs [6].

Conclusion

In less than 100 lines of code, you now have a graphical application that will work on the desktop or mobile device of your choice. You can find the full application source code on the project's GitHub page [7]. Development with Fyne is easy to get started with. I hope you will be inspired to explore the potential of this GUI toolkit further.

Visit the Fyne apps website [8] to see a list of other applications that have been developed using Fyne. To find out more about programming with Fyne, check out the Fyne documentation and tutorials [9]. As a Linux enthusiast, you may also be interested in trying out the full desktop environment that was built using Fyne, FyshOS [10].

The Author

Andrew Williams is a software engineer and entrepreneur based in Scotland, UK, with experience in many open source technologies, having been a core developer in large projects such as Enlightenment, EFL, Maven, and Fyne. He is the founder of the Fyne toolkit and CEO of Fyne Labs where they work to expand the possibilities of platform-agnostic app development. He is also the author of Building Cross-Platform GUI Applications with Fyne and Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go.