The primary use case for Rust being CLI is somewhat strange and speaks to non-technical considerations. Does anyone really think there is an advantage Rust brings here over everything else -- Golang, Python etc. Rust community seems to go after "hot" areas in hopes of getting traction, fully understandable. Writing web services is another area Rust people jumped into looking at the popularity of Golang. Most recent "hot" area being crypto. The reality is none of these areas is a sweet spot for Rust and will remain niche (in comparison to other languages). The sweet spot is low level systems programming and displacing C++ (of which there is a real and desperate need). If the community can focus on interoperability with C++ (at the gnarly level), would be make a big difference to adoption.

If I can have a XAML/WinForms like UI dev experience with Rust on Linux, I am sold. Even just a usable rich UI framework on Linux. Cross-platform is a bonus, but since I believe Linux is the future I can live without other platform targets.

We all hate the resource hogging desktop apps that are just browsers (which in turn are just OS'es). That is a niche as wide and as open as the ocean. Cryptography and web frameworks are nice, but not where the action needs to be.

If UI is too complex for Rust, give up altogether on Rust. As C/C++ keeps the win since the nineties and we know the competition will not be held anymore.

You cannot even get it with Rust/WinRT straight out of Redmond, let alone having hopes to get it on Linux.

C++/WinRT tooling is a shadow of C++/CX capabilities (which feels like Microsoft's C++ Builder), and while the same folks are having fun with Rust/WinRT, its tooling is even worse.

I doubt that in five years it will be any close to what C++/CX was already doing in 2015.

Specially since they outsource any graphic tooling responsabilities to the DevDiv folks.

That's sad. I would love to tinker with UI programming on Linux, but it seems like to get anything decent you will have to use QT, which brings C++ as a requirement.

https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs

Note the lack of of safe wrappers for Windows APIs, and still no good way to create the Windows Runtime objects necessary to interoperate with XAML.

Also the basic examples with very little UI code on what is supposed to be a projection for a Windows UI framework.