CNC UI foundation

This is a starter Go module for a small CNC / GRBL-style desktop UI.

It is intentionally split into a thin UI layer and a testable core:

• internal/app: controller and app event model
• internal/grbl: GRBL command building and basic status parsing
• internal/transport: serial transport interface, fake transport, and real serial transport behind a build tag
• internal/ports: serial port discovery helpers behind a build tag
• internal/ui: MIQT / Qt Widgets UI behind a build tag
• cmd/cncui: application entrypoint

Layout

The UI follows the requested layout:

• Left pane: console with command line + send button underneath
• Right pane: connection controls, jog controls, machine action buttons, status labels

The connection pane now contains just:

• port selector
• refresh ports button
• connect / disconnect button

This keeps connection controls focused only on selecting a USB port and connecting.

Simpler port discovery seam

Port discovery no longer uses a one-method SystemLister type. The controller now accepts a plain function of type ports.ListFunc, and the real app wires it up with ports.ListPorts.

That keeps the seam easy to test while avoiding unnecessary objects.

Why build tags are used

The real serial implementation and MIQT UI are behind build tags:

• serial enables the real USB/TTY serial implementation and port discovery
• miqt enables the Qt / MIQT UI

This keeps the core logic testable on machines that do not have Qt installed.

Run tests

Core and stub-path tests work without Qt installed:

go test ./...

If you want to include the serial-tagged transport and port-listing tests on a machine with the serial dependency downloaded:

go test -tags serial ./internal/transport ./internal/ports ./internal/app ./internal/grbl

Build the real app

On a machine with Qt 5 development packages installed:

go build -tags 'miqt serial' ./cmd/cncui

Linux Qt prerequisites

A minimal Debian/Ubuntu setup for MIQT Qt 5 is typically:

sudo apt install qtbase5-dev build-essential golang-go pkg-config

Notes

• The serial transport uses go.bug.st/serial.
• The UI is written directly against github.com/mappu/miqt/qt.
• The no-tag build prints an error telling you to rebuild with tags.
• The current implementation sends conservative baseline GRBL commands for jog, unlock, home, hold, resume, status, and soft reset.
• This is a foundation, not a complete production operator console yet.

Suggested next additions

• configurable machine profile for GRBL-variant differences
• richer status parsing (MPos, WPos, alarms, feed/spindle overrides)
• per-button enable/disable rules by machine state
• reconnect flow and explicit serial read timeouts
• log export and persistent user settings
• integration tests against your MockGRBL implementation