GNUstep Adwaita Theme

plugins-themes-adwaita is an Adwaita-targeted theme plugin for GNUstep.

The goal is pragmatic rather than literal pixel-perfect GTK emulation: make GNUstep applications feel at home on a modern GNOME desktop while staying inside the GNUstep theme layer wherever possible.

The current priority is forward-looking GNOME integration, not strict backward compatibility with the appearance of existing GNUstep applications. The main use case today is making it possible to build new GNUstep apps that feel at home on GNOME. Backward-compatibility improvements may still happen later, but they are not the primary design constraint for this release.

Screenshots

Status

This project should currently be treated as an 0.1.0-alpha1 release.

What is already in place:

• Adwaita-inspired palette, spacing, and control rendering for core widgets
• A GNUstep demo app for side-by-side inspection
• A GTK4/libadwaita reference app for comparison
• GNOME settings integration for fonts and appearance variants

What is still known to be incomplete:

• text-field focus/render parity is not fully resolved yet
• some popup/combo-box interaction details still need manual polish
• visual acceptance is still partly manual rather than fully scripted

Known Issues

• Focusing a text field can still cause a subtle text rendering change compared to the unfocused state.
• Combo-box and popup-menu interaction chrome is substantially improved, but a few interaction details still need final polish against the GTK reference.
• The project still relies on manual side-by-side visual review for some acceptance decisions.

Scope

This theme targets stock Adwaita as the visual baseline for GNUstep on GNOME.

It does not currently aim to:

• support arbitrary third-party GTK themes
• reproduce GTK4's rendering architecture
• patch libs-gui unless a clear framework blocker remains after theme work
• guarantee that existing GNUstep applications will preserve their prior look unchanged under this theme

Repository Layout

Source/                  Theme implementation
Resources/               Theme bundle metadata and assets
Examples/ThemeDemo/      GNUstep-side demo app
Reference/AdwaitaDemo/   GTK4/libadwaita comparison harness
Tests/Scripts/           Capture and local verification helpers
Docs/                    Public design notes and roadmap

Requirements

Build requirements for the GNUstep theme bundle:

• GNUstep make and GNUstep GUI development environment
• pkg-config
• gio-2.0
• glib-2.0
• gobject-2.0

Reference app requirements:

• Python 3
• PyGObject
• GTK4
• libadwaita

Build

make
make -C Examples/ThemeDemo

Install the theme for the current user:

make install GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DOMAIN=USER

The installed theme bundle will be placed under:

~/GNUstep/Library/Themes/Adwaita.theme

Run

Launch the GNUstep demo app with the Adwaita theme selected:

PATH=/usr/GNUstep/System/Tools:$PATH defaults write ThemeDemo GSTheme Adwaita
bash Tests/Scripts/run-theme-demo.sh

Launch the GTK reference app:

python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py

Open a specific page in the reference app:

python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --page controls
python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --page data
python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --page text

Development Notes

The fastest practical review loop is:

make
make -C Examples/ThemeDemo
make install GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DOMAIN=USER
bash Tests/Scripts/run-theme-demo.sh --page controls

Useful helpers:

• bash Tests/Scripts/run-theme-demo.sh
• bash Tests/Scripts/run-adwaita-demo.sh
• bash Tests/Scripts/capture-theme-demo.sh --page controls --output /tmp/theme-controls.png
• bash Tests/Scripts/capture-adwaita-demo.sh --page controls --output /tmp/adwaita-controls.png
• python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --dump-metrics

ThemeDemo also accepts command automation for focused visual checks:

Examples/ThemeDemo/ThemeDemo.app/ThemeDemo --command-script /tmp/theme-demo.commands
Examples/ThemeDemo/ThemeDemo.app/ThemeDemo --command-fifo /tmp/theme-demo.fifo
python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --command-script /tmp/adwaita-demo.commands
python3 Reference/AdwaitaDemo/adwaita_demo.py --command-fifo /tmp/adwaita-demo.fifo

Supported commands are page NAME, click X Y, focus NAME, blur-to NAME, select-all, open-dropdown NAME, type TEXT, key TEXT, wait SECONDS, display, screenshot PATH, screenshot-screen PATH, capture-dropdown NAME PATH, capture-alert PATH, and quit. Text audit names are primary, password, search, disabled, body, and combo. Coordinates are backing-pixel positions from the top-left of the internally captured content image, so they line up with screenshots produced by screenshot PATH. Use screenshot-screen PATH when auditing popups or dropdowns that render outside the application content view; it uses GNUstep screen capture first and falls back to gnome-screenshot only if needed. Use capture-dropdown NAME PATH for GNUstep combo boxes whose popup tracking is modal; it schedules the same internal screen capture while the popup is open. Use capture-alert PATH to audit a stock document-close NSAlert.

Internal Notes

If local-only working notes are needed, keep them under .internal/.

That directory is ignored on purpose so internal handoff notes, private paths, and local debug artifacts do not show up in a public GitHub repository.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

See COPYING.LIB.

Current Ownership

• Author: Daniel Boyd