raygui-jlt Guide

User-facing documentation for raygui-jlt: 24 raygui examples written in jolt (native Clojure on Chez Scheme, no JVM), calling raygui directly over its C ABI through jolt.ffi. No wrapper library, no codegen: one shared bindings namespace and a suite of small example programs on top of it.

The suite is complete: 24 examples across 7 groups. bb info always prints the live count.

Why this exists

raygui is raylib's companion immediate-mode GUI library, and it turns out to be a very good fit for a small, direct FFI binding: its 61 functions almost all share one shape, a Rectangle passed by value, application state through a pointer, an int result. There is no callback machinery, no retained widget tree, and raygui keeps no per-control state of its own, which is exactly what makes it easy to bind and hard to leak. the-ffi-shape.md is the full account.

Relationship to `b12n-raylib-jlt`

Same approach, different library. Both repos bind a real C library directly over its ABI with jolt.ffi, Chez foreign-procedure underneath, no wrapper and no codegen. Where they differ is how hard the library leans on structs passed by value, and that difference is much smaller here than it is there.

raylib's interesting surface is Image, Texture, Font, Model and the Camera2D / Camera3D pair, several of which need the pointer-trick workaround b12n-raylib-jlt documents. raygui's only by-value struct anywhere in its control surface is Rectangle, plus Color in one icon function and Font in the two font accessors this repo leaves unbound. One recurring 16-byte struct, one module-level scratch buffer, and the whole class of FFI lifetime bugs a bigger struct surface would invite never comes up.

The three commands that matter

bb lib:build        # compile the vendored header into lib/libraygui.{dylib,so}
bb check             # headless compile of all 24 examples, no window
bb <example-name>    # run one, e.g. bb basic-controls (opens a window)

Example tasks build the native library automatically if it is missing, so a fresh clone runs bb basic-controls with no separate setup step.

What's on these pages

building-libraygui.md: raygui ships no library. This repo builds its own from a vendored header, and the one detail that makes the build actually work is that it must link raylib dynamically. Read this first if you are wondering why there's a build step at all.
the-ffi-shape.md: the recurring by-value-Rectangle-in, pointer-out, int-result signature; the scratch Rectangle and the second buffer GuiScrollPanel needs; cells and their eight types; the two char** functions; and what's verified versus assumed on non-AArch64 hardware.
what-the-gates-do-not-catch.md: four ways an example can be wrong while passing every automated check, each one measured, not guessed. The most useful page here if you're about to add an example of your own.
example-catalog.md: every example, its group, what it shows, and which raygui controls it exercises.

What this repo does not cover

Demo GIFs. Recording is a stated non-goal, not an oversight: the sibling repo measured that synthetic clicks do not actuate a raylib app at all (0 of 8 clicks delivered at every tested hold duration), and raygui is mouse-driven by definition, so a recorded GIF could never show a button being pressed, a dropdown opening, or a slider being dragged.

Vendored revision

vendor/raygui.h is pinned at 5.0-9-gfbf5d95, zlib licensed. See NOTICE for the full attribution, including the four examples ported from raygui's own example tree.