Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Qt6 development libraries — apt install qt6-base-dev on Debian/Ubuntu
• Go 1.22+
• Rugo — go install github.com/rubiojr/rugo@latest

The miqt Qt6 bindings are fetched automatically on first build.

Hello World

Create main.rugo:

require "github.com/rubiojr/cute@latest"

cute.app("Hello", 400, 200) do
  cute.vbox do
    cute.label("Hello, world!")
    cute.button("Quit") do
      cute.quit()
    end
  end
end

Build and run:

rugo build main.rugo -o hello && ./hello

How It Works

Cute is a Rugo module — you load it with require "github.com/rubiojr/cute@latest" and call its functions through the cute namespace.

The cute.app() function creates a window and runs the Qt event loop. Everything inside the do...end block builds the UI tree. Widgets are automatically added to the current layout — no manual parenting needed.

do...end is Rugo's trailing block syntax. It's sugar for passing a fn() as the last argument:

# These are equivalent:
cute.vbox(fn()
  cute.label("Hello")
end)

cute.vbox do
  cute.label("Hello")
end

Project Structure

A typical Cute app looks like:

my-app/
  main.rugo      # App entry point
  style.css      # Qt stylesheet (optional)

For larger apps, extract components into separate .rugo files and load them with require.

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Next: Layouts & Widgets