Introduction

TGFX (Tencent Graphics) is a lightweight 2D graphics library for rendering text, shapes, and images. It offers high-performance APIs compatible with various GPU hardware and software platforms, including iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, OpenHarmony, and the Web. Initially developed as the default graphics engine for the PAG project starting from version 4.0, TGFX aims to be a compelling alternative to the Skia graphics library while maintaining a much smaller binary size. Over time, it has found its way into many other products, such as Hippy, Tencent Docs and various video-editing apps.

Platform Support

• iOS 9.0 or later
• Android 4.4 or later
• macOS 10.15 or later
• Windows 7.0 or later
• Chrome 69.0 or later (Web)
• Safari 11.3 or later (Web)

Backing Renderers

Vector Backend	GPU Backend	Target Platforms	Status
FreeType	OpenGL	All	complete
CoreGraphics	OpenGL	iOS, macOS	complete
Canvas2D	WebGL	Web	complete
CoreGraphics	Metal	iOS, macOS	in progress
FreeType	Vulkan	Android, Linux	planned

Branch Management

• The main branch is our active development branch, containing the latest features and bug fixes.
• The branches under release/ are our stable milestone branches, which are fully tested. We periodically create a release/{version} branch from the main branch. Once a release/{version} branch is created, only high-priority fixes are checked into it.

Build Prerequisites

TGFX uses C++17 features. Here are the minimum tools needed to build TGFX on different platforms:

• Xcode 11.0+
• GCC 9.0+
• Visual Studio 2019+
• NodeJS 14.14.0+
• Ninja 1.9.0+
• CMake 3.13.0+
• QT 5.13.0+
• NDK 19.2+ (19.2.5345600 recommended)
• Emscripten 3.1.58+

Please note the following additional notices:

• Ensure you have installed the [Desktop development with C++] and [Universal Windows Platform development] components for VS2019.
• It is highly recommended to use the latest version of CMake. Many older versions of CMake may have various bugs across different platforms.

Dependencies

TGFX uses the depsync tool to manage third-party dependencies.

For macOS platform：

Run this script from the root of the project:

./sync_deps.sh

This script will automatically install the necessary tools and sync all third-party repositories.

For other platforms:

First, ensure you have the latest version of Node.js installed (you may need to restart your computer afterward). Then, run the following command to install the depsync tool:

npm install -g depsync

Then, run depsync in the project's root directory.

depsync

You might need to enter your Git account and password during synchronization. Make sure you’ve enabled the git-credential-store so that CMakeLists.txt can automatically trigger synchronization next time.

Getting Started

We provide concise demos for various platforms to help you integrate the tgfx library into your project. After building the project, you'll have a simple app that renders different test cases from the drawers/ directory. These test cases include rendering shapes, images, and basic text. You can switch between test cases with a simple touch on the screen. For more guidance on API usage, check out the test cases in the test/ directories, which can offer valuable insights and assistance.

Before building the demo projects, please carefully follow the instructions in the Build Prerequisites and Dependencies sections. These will guide you through the necessary steps to set up your development environment.

Android

The Android demo project requires the Android NDK. We recommend using version 19.2.5345600, which has been fully tested with the TGFX library. If you open the project with Android Studio, it will automatically download the NDK during Gradle synchronization. Alternatively, you can download it from the NDK Downloads page.

If you choose to manually download the Android NDK, please extract it to the default location. On macOS, this would be:

/Users/yourname/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/19.2.5345600

On Windows, it would be：

C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\ndk\19.2.5345600

Alternatively, you can set one of the following environment variables to help tgfx locate the NDK:

["ANDROID_NDK_HOME", "ANDROID_NDK_ROOT", "ANDROID_NDK", "NDK_HOME", "NDK_ROOT", "NDK_PATH"]

To get started, open the android/ directory in Android Studio. If you encounter any issues during Gradle synchronization, make sure you haven't accidentally clicked on any pop-up hints for Gradle version upgrades. If you have, undo the changes and try synchronizing again. If the issue is related to your IDE configuration, search for a solution on Google. If you believe the problem is with the project configuration, you can open an Issue to address it.

iOS

In the ios/ directory, run the following command or double-click it:

./gen_ios

This will generate an Xcode project for iPhone devices. To generate a project for simulators instead, use the following command:

./gen_simulator

This will generate a simulator project for the native architecture, such as arm64 for Apple Silicon Macs and x64 for Intel Macs. If you want to generate a project for a specific architecture, use the -a option:

./gen_simulator -a x64

You can also pass CMake options using the -D flag. For example, to enable WebP encoding support, run:

./gen_ios -DTGFX_USE_WEBP_ENCODE=ON

Finally, open Xcode and launch the ios/Hello2D.xcworkspace to build and run the demo project.

macOS

In the mac/ directory, run the following command or double-click it:

./gen_mac

This will generate a project for the native architecture, such as arm64 for Apple Silicon Macs or x64 for Intel Macs. If you want to generate a project for a specific architecture, use the -a option, for example:

./gen_mac -a x64

You can also pass CMake options using the -D flag. For example, to enable FreeType support, run:

./gen_mac -DTGFX_USE_FREETYPE=ON

Finally, open Xcode and launch the mac/Hello2D.xcworkspace. You are all set!

Web

To run the web demo, you need the Emscripten SDK. You can download and install it from the official website. We recommend using the latest version. If you’re on macOS, you can also install it using the following script:

brew install emscripten

To get started, go to the web/ directory and run the following command to install the necessary node modules:

npm install

Then, in the web/ directory, run the following command to build the demo project:

npm run build

This will generate the hello2d.js and hello2d.wasm files in the web/demo/wasm directory. Next, you can start an HTTP server by running the following command:

npm run server

This will open http://localhost:8081/web/demo/index.html in your default browser. You can also open it manually to view the demo.

To debug the C++ code, install the browser plugin: C/C++ DevTools Support (DWARF). Then, open Chrome DevTools, go to Settings > Experiments, and enable the option WebAssembly Debugging: Enable DWARF support.

Next, replace the previous build command with:

npm run build:debug

With these steps completed, you can debug C++ files directly in Chrome DevTools.

The above commands build and run a single-threaded version. To build a multithreaded version, just add the suffix ":mt" to each command. For example:

npm run build:mt
npm run build:mt:debug
npm run serser:mt

To build the demo project in CLion, open the Settings panel and go to Build, Execution, Deployment > CMake. Create a new build target and set the CMake options to:

DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="path/to/emscripten/emscripten/version/cmake/Modules/Platform/Emscripten.cmake"

After creating the build target, adjust the Configurations to match the new build target. This will allow you to build the tgfx library in CLion.

Additionally, when using ESModule for your project, you need to manually include the generated .wasm file in the final web program. Common packing tools often ignore the .wasm file. Also, make sure to upload the .wasm file to a server so users can access it.

Linux

On Linux, systems often lack GPU hardware support. To address this, we use the SwiftShader library to emulate a GPU rendering environment. Since SwiftShader depends on certain X11 header files, you need to install the following packages before building the demo project:

yum install libX11-devel --nogpg

Next, run the following commands in the linux/ directory:

cmake -B ./build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build ./build -- -j 12

The demo executable will be located in the build directory. You can also open the linux/ directory in CLion and build the demo project directly in the IDE.

Windows

To get started, open the win/ directory in CLion. Then, go to File->Settings and navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment->ToolChains. Set the toolchain to Visual Studio with either amd64 (recommended) or x86 architecture. It's also recommended to use the Ninja generator for CMake to speed up the build process. You can set this in Build, Execution, Deployment->CMake by choosing Ninja in the Generator row. Once done, you'll be able to build and run the Hello2D target.

If you prefer using Visual Studio IDE, open the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019 and run the following command in the win/ directory:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES="Debug" -B ./Debug-x64

This will generate a project for the x64 architecture with the Debug configuration. To generate a project for the x86 architecture with the Release configuration, open the x86 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019 and run the following command:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A Win32 -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES="Release" -B ./Release-x86

Finally, open the Hello2D.sln file in the Debug-x64/ or Release-x86/ directory, and you’re all set!

QT

For macOS users, open the qt/ directory in CLion. Then, go to the qt/QTCMAKE.cfg file and update the QT path to your local QT installation path. After that, you can build and run the Hello2D target.

For Windows users, make sure the ToolChain in CLion is set to Visual Studio with the amd64 architecture. Then, go to the qt/ folder in CLion and find the qt/QTCMAKE.cfg file. Update the QT path to your local QT installation path. Next, in the configuration panel of the Hello2D target in CLion, set the local QT DLL library path in the Environment Variables field, e.g., PATH=C:\Qt\6.6.1\msvc2019_64\bin. Finally, you can build and run the Hello2D target.

Build Library

Aside from directly integrating the source code of tgfx into your project, you also have the option of linking with the precompiled libraries. TGFX uses the vendor_tools project as its build system, providing a unified way to build the tgfx library across all platforms.

To get started quickly, run the following command in the root directory:

node build_tgfx

This command builds the release version of the tgfx library for the native platform. After running it, you will find the compiled tgfx libraries in the out/release directory. To target a specific platform, use the -p [--platform] option. Supported platforms are: win, mac, ios, linux, android, web, ohos.

node build_tgfx -p ios

For Apple platforms, you have the convenient -x [--xcframework] option available. This option enables you to effortlessly create xcframeworks:

node build_tgfx -p mac -x

After running the command, you will find the tgfx.xcframework in the out/release/mac directory.

You can also pass CMake options using the -D prefix. For example, to build tgfx with FreeType support enabled, run:

node build_tgfx -DTGFX_USE_FREETYPE=ON

For more details and options, run the command with the -h or --help flag:

node build_tgfx -h

Contribution

If you have any ideas or suggestions to improve TGFX, feel free to start a discussion, open an issue, or submit a pull request. Before doing so, please read our Contributing Guide.

Support Us

If you find TGFX helpful, please give us a Star. We really appreciate your support :)

License

TGFX is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License