kwxJulia

Julia language bindings for wxWidgets via kwxFFI, enabling cross-platform GUI applications that render with native controls on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The Julia package name is WxWidgets — use using WxWidgets to load it.

⚠️ Warning: Not Production Ready

Do not use this Julia/wxWidgets interface in production.

• The kwxFFI ABI interface is not stable and can change without warning.
• Very little testing has been done, and won't be until late Q2 of 2026.
• API surface may change as idioms are refined.

Overview

kwxJulia provides a two-layer binding architecture:

1. FFI Layer (wx/KwxFFI_gen.jl) — Auto-generated raw ccall declarations mapping directly to the kwxFFI C DLL exports. All pointers are Ptr{Cvoid}.
2. Widget Layer (src/widgets/*.jl) — Idiomatic Julia wrappers with proper types, keyword arguments, multiple dispatch, and automatic string conversion.

Users should work with the widget layer. The FFI layer (KwxFFI submodule) is exported for direct access to constants and event types.

Quick Example

push!(LOAD_PATH, joinpath(@__DIR__, ".."))
using WxWidgets

run_app(app_name="Hello World") do
    frame = wxFrame(nothing, "Hello World - kwxJulia", size=(400, 300))

    create_status_bar(frame)
    set_status_text(frame, "Click the button!")

    button = wxButton(frame, "Say Hello", size=(120, 40))

    on_click!(button) do event
        set_status_text(frame, "Hello from Julia!")
    end

    sizer = wxBoxSizer(:vertical)
    add!(sizer, button,
         proportion=0,
         flags=KwxFFI.ALL() | KwxFFI.ALIGN_CENTER(),
         border=5)
    set_sizer(frame, sizer)

    set_top_window(frame)
    show_window(frame)
end

More examples are in the examples/ directory.

Type Hierarchy

Types mirror the wxWidgets C++ class hierarchy using Julia abstract types:

wxObject
├── wxEvtHandler
│   └── wxWindow
│       ├── wxControl (wxButton, wxStaticText, wxTextCtrl, wxCheckBox, wxComboBox, wxListBox)
│       └── wxTopLevelWindow (wxFrame)
└── wxSizer (wxBoxSizer, wxGridSizer, wxFlexGridSizer, wxGridBagSizer, wxWrapSizer)

This enables idiomatic multiple dispatch — e.g., show_window works on any wxWindow subtype.

Naming Conventions

Types use the wx lowercase prefix (matching C++ wxWidgets) rather than Julia's conventional Wx PascalCase. This makes it straightforward for wxWidgets developers to map between the Julia and C++ APIs.

Entity	Convention	Example
Types	wx prefix	wxFrame, wxButton
Constructors	Type name	wxFrame(nothing, "title")
Methods	snake_case	set_status_text(frame, "text")
Mutating functions	trailing !	set_value!(ctrl, "text"), clear!(ctrl)
Constants / events	Via KwxFFI	KwxFFI.ALL(), KwxFFI.ID_ANY()

Requirements

• Julia 1.10 or later
• kwxFFI shared library (kwxffi.dll / libkwxffi.so / libkwxffi.dylib) from KeyWorksRW/kwxFFI

Building kwxFFI

Building kwxFFI requires:

• A C/C++ toolchain with C++17 support (MSVC, GCC, or Clang)
• CMake 3.20 or later
• Ninja build system

Configure and build:

cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
ninja -C build

A release build will be placed in bin/Release/ relative to the kwxJulia package root. This path is added to Libdl.DL_LOAD_PATH automatically at module init.

Note: Once GitHub Actions CI is in place, pre-built binaries will be available as release assets — eliminating the need to build kwxFFI from source.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE for details.