What

WebMaker2000 is a (WIP) cross-platform static site generator with an unapologetically spartan GUI:

More up-to-date screenshots can be found here.

The implementation is an experiment in rubbing sqlite on a desktop GUI:

Both data and GUI state are stored in an sqlite3 database, all of which are queried every frame. All GUI actions trigger changes to the underlying db instead of mutating any in-memory representation. This sounds expensive, but:

• dvui (the GUI library) only redraws when there is user interaction.
• sqlite has an in-memory page cache out of the box, so read queries do not hit the disk every redraw.
• write queries only happen when the user actually changes something, and even when they do, sqlite is fast, especially now that SSDs are the norm.

What we gain is a massively simplified unidirectional state management system, and we get autosave for free on every single action. We also get all of the benefits of using sqlite as an application file format, chief among them being persistent undo/redo, but also atomic writes, easy atomic schema changes, powerful data modelling & querying capabilities.

Remaining puzzle to solve: background processing for tasks that take longer than our per-frame budget:

• handling mid-operation crashes might be tricky?
• how would it interact with the undo thing?

MVP checklist:

• Persistent undo/redo: Basically adapted sqlite's guide to emacs' undo style, which avoids accidentally losing data.
• Asset upload
• User-configurable deploy command (e.g. shelling out to rclone)
• Preview server
• User-customizable template system
• RSS/Atom feed
• OpenGraph tags

Compile

Dependencies:

• Build time: zig master (0.14.0-dev.3271+bd237bced as of this writing)
• Runtime: libc

Statically compiled deps that can optionally be linked dynamically:

• sdl3
• freetype2
• sqlite3
• lua (for djot.lua, which is vendored here)

zig build run

# or, to watch:
find src | entr -rc zig build run

# optionally, to dynamically link to system libraries:
zig build -fsys=sdl3 -fsys=freetype -fsys=sqlite3 -fsys=lua

# conversely, to compile a super compatible executable that will Just Work on
# any GNU/Linux distro that's not older than Debian 10 "Buster":
zig build -Dtarget=x86_64-linux-gnu.2.28

Linux desktop integration

Copy files from ./xdg into your $HOME, or symlink using stow: stow --no-folding --verbose=1 -t $HOME xdg