Hi,
we use LVGL in our Smartwatch project (link). This Smartwatch is able to run user-specific apps and we are looking for a good workflow to use SquareLine Studio to design the UI of those apps. We use Zephyr and CMake as build environment.
I played around with different options and ideas on how we could combine everything in a good and clever way, but I got stuck at different points because SquareLine Studio isn´t flexible enough. Maybe there is a good solution to handle it.
What do you want to achieve?
However, it turns out that SquareLine Studio is not ideal for designing single screens or standalone applications that can be embedded in an existing LVGL application.
What does an ideal workflow look like (for us)?
- Use SquareLine Studio to design the UI
- Export the UI into an UI directory of the app
- The UI directory of the app contains a CMakeLists.txt to integrate the exported UI
- Add the source code for the app to connect the app UI with the app logic and allow the integration into our ecosystem
- Compile everything
What kind of problems are we facing now?
- The CMakeLists.txt compiles everything as a library and this can not be integrated with our application without issues (maybe an issue with our setup). But it would be helpful if we could choose between compiling as a library or as raw code, by switching between
add_library(ui ${SOURCES})
or
target_sources(ui PRIVATE ${SOURCES})
-
ui_helpersis generated for every UI. The functions in this code have the same names which leads to duplicated errors during the compilation if we have more than one UI added. -
A bunch of
externvariables is exported. There is a risk of issues when using more than one UI and without a proper name scheme on our side (which is hard to implement). Or we do have to rename all the variables to prevent this -
ui_inithas the same name in every UI, so we have duplicated issues again -
The names for the UI initialization function (i. e.
ui_Home_screen_init) should contain the project name. Otherwise, we have a duplicated issue again if we have another UI with aHomescreen -
It´s theoretically possible to use each UI as a library (we haven´t tested it, because of the issue from above). But then we still have the naming issue
Maybe there is an option to create the UI as “module” or something like this. As a module, the files ui and ui_helper shouldn´t be included in the exported files. Then ui_helpers has to be generated manually, because they are needed only once(?).
Do you see alternative options and workaround to achieve it?
Not yet. I think we will stick with the plan to do all the changes by hand and individually for each UI project. But we are thinking about it at the moment.
Feel free to discuss this with me. Would be really nice if we could find a good solution to handle these issues, so we can use your tool for our project.