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GUI Strategy

laqieer edited this page Jul 4, 2026 · 1 revision

GUI Strategy

FEBuilderGBA ships two graphical front-ends over one shared engine, held to different standards on purpose.

GUI Status What it accepts
WinForms GUI (Windows) Stable — used widely for years Bug fixes only. No new features.
Avalonia GUI (Windows / Linux / macOS, + Android) Preview — not yet widely relied upon All new GUI features ship here.

Why

  • WinForms is the production workhorse. A large user base depends on it daily, and its behaviour is deeply name-driven, which makes changes disproportionately regression-prone. Its goal is stability — it changes only to fix bugs.
  • Avalonia is still in preview. It is cross-platform and not yet most users' primary tool, so a regression there has limited blast radius. That makes it the right place to build and iterate on new features.

What this means for you

  • Requesting a feature? It targets the Avalonia GUI. Post it in Ideas Discussions.
  • Found a bug in the WinForms GUI? Please report it — bug fixes to WinForms are welcome.
  • Core / CLI (the shared, cross-platform engine and command-line tools) are not restricted by this policy.

The authoritative policy lives in the repository at docs/GUI-STRATEGY.md.

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