Makepad Build Commands

Edward Tan published on
4 min

Makepad is a cross-platform UI framework written in Rust. It is in active development, but is already usable to build quick prototypes and simple (or even complicated UI) applications.

One of the key features of the Makepad is its ability to simply, and quickly, build and run applications on multiple platforms, including MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and WebAssembly.

Here are the current/latest instructions on how to build and run Makepad applications on the different platforms.

Assumptions

We will assume the following: Name of application: Sample_App

It should be changed to any one of the existing example apps in the Project Robius repository.

Build & Run Instructions

Follow step 1 commands below for initial setup of the Makepad build and run environment. After step 2, you may choose any one or more of the platforms you're interested in building for.

1. Setup Makepad

Replace projects with your own directory name.

cd ~/projects

Clone the Makepad repository

git clone https://github.com/makepad/makepad.git

or

git clone git@github.com:makepad/makepad.git

Change to latest 'rik' branch (Optional)

cd ~/projects/makepad
git branch rik

Install makepad subcommand for cargo

cd ~/projects/makepad
cargo install --path ./tools/cargo_makepad

Install platform toolchains

rustup toolchain install nightly

2. Get Project

Clone the Sample_App repo

git clone https://github.com/project-robius/Sample_App.git

or

git clone git@github.com:project-robius/Sample_App.git

3. MacOS / PC

Running on Desktop is the quickest way to try out an example app.

cd ~/projects/Sample_App
cargo run

And there should be a desktop application window now running (may need to click on the icon on MacOS's Dock to show it)

4. Android Build

Install Android toolchain (First time)

cargo makepad android install-toolchain

Install app on Android device or Android emulator

Open either the Android emulator or connect to a real Android device use adb command to make sure there's a single device connected properly, then install and run as below:

cd ~/projects/Sample_App
cargo makepad android run -p Sample_App --release

The application will be installed and launch on either the emulator or device.

5. iOS Setup & Install

Install IOS toolchain (First time)

xcode-select --install
cargo makepad apple ios install-toolchain

Install app on Apple devivce or iOS simulator

iOS Setup

For iOS, the process is slightly more complicated. The steps involved are:

  1. Enable your iPhone's Developer Mode, please see instructions here: Enable Developer Mode
  2. Setup an Apple Developer account
  3. Setup an empty skeleton project in Xcode
    1. File -> New -> Project to create a new "App"
    2. Set the Product Name as SampleApp (used in --app later)
    3. Set the Organization Identifier to a value of your choice, for this example we will use rs.robius (used in --org later)
    4. Setup the Project Signing & Capabilities to select the proper team account
  4. In Xcode, Build/Run this project to install and run the app on the simulator and device
  5. Once the simulator and device has the "skeleton" app installed and running properly, then it is ready for Makepad to install its application.

Makepad Install

We will run the cargo makepad apple ios command, similar to Android build above, but there are some 2 to 4 additional parameters that need to be filled in:

--org

First few parts of the organization identifier (which makes up the Bundle Identifier). Usually in the form of com.somecompany or org.someorg, etc. This is the same value used to setup the initial skeleton app above. For this example:

rs.robius

--app

The name of the application or the project. This is the same as the Product Name used to setup the initial skeleton app above. In this case:

SampleApp

--org-id (real-device only)

Find the <key>ApplicationIdentifierPrefix</key> and use the value in the <string>ORGIDVALUE</string>, from the newest **.mobileprovision file located in the ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles directory. ORGIDVALUE should be a 10 digit alpha-numeric value.

--ios-version (Optional)

Defaults to 17. Set it to 16 or other values if the device is not running iOS 17.

Example

For this example, we have the Bundle Identifier of rs.robius.SampleApp

Install app on IOS simulator

cd ~/projects/Sample_App
cargo makepad apple ios --org=rs.robius --app=SampleApp run-sim -p Sample_App --release

Install app on IOS device

cd ~/projects/Sample_App
cargo makepad apple ios --org-id=ORGIDVALUE --org=rs.robius --app=SampleApp run-device -p Sample_App --release

The application will be installed and launch on either the emulator or device.

6. WASM Build

Coming Soon