glacier

A DAW built from scratch in Rust as a deliberate learning project. No frameworks — raw wgpu, CPAL, and winit.

status

Glacier is a working DAW with real rough edges — expect some UI/interaction bugs as active development continues. Core sequencing, playlist arrangement, and playback all work end-to-end; the project is being actively refactored and hardened rather than considered finished. Issues and PRs pointing out bugs are genuinely useful right now.

getting started

Glacier is a Cargo workspace with two crates: glacier-app (the application) and glacier-dsp (DSP utilities).

git clone https://github.com/remysedlak/glacier.git
cd glacier
cargo run --release

Requires a working audio output device (via CPAL) and a Vulkan/Metal/DX12-capable GPU (via wgpu). No other setup needed — fonts and icons are bundled in assets/.

To open an existing project, use File → Open and pick a .toml project file (see assets/projects/ for an example). A blank default project loads on first run.

features

• step sequencer with per-pattern sequences, MIDI velocity, and velocity bar view per track
• piano roll — place and edit notes per track per pattern, scrollable note grid and fixed key column
• load .wav tracks at runtime, add/delete tracks dynamically
• variable step counts per track
• multiple patterns, switchable from the UI, with duplicate support
• playlist view — arrange patterns across a timeline with x/y scroll and scissor clipping per region
• mixer window with master volume slider
• per-track volume knobs and mute controls
• draggable, z-ordered mini-windows with correct click and hover ownership across overlapping windows
• track detail windows per track
• right-click context menus on patterns and tracks
• SVG icon pipeline — toolbar icons rasterized via resvg, tooltip system on hover
• custom text rendering via fontdue — glyph cache, textured quads, painter's algorithm interleaving
• multiple font support (variable + monospace)
• play/pause, stop, BPM control, keyboard shortcuts (space, ctrl+s)
• cursor icon feedback on all interactive elements
• project save/load via TOML
• footer status bar showing project path and FPS

modules

• audio — CPAL stream, sequencer callback, event-driven trigger resolution by track ID
• app — winit event loop, input handling, ring buffer dispatch, file dialog threads
• project — serialization structs, WAV loading
• graphics/mod — wgpu pipeline, draw loop, painter's algorithm, click owner and hover blocking
• graphics/font — fontdue glyph cache, texture upload, NDC quad generation
• graphics/widgets — Rectangle, Square, draw_slider, window_title_bar, layout constants
• graphics/primitives — ScreenConfig, Vertex, draw_rectangle, draw_knob, padding constants
• graphics/icons — SVG rasterization via resvg, icon cache, Tooltip
• graphics/color — named color constants
• graphics/context_menu — ephemeral right-click menus
• graphics/components/toolbar — toolbar draw, icon positions, BPM controls
• graphics/components/pattern_tray — pattern list and selection
• graphics/components/footer — status bar
• graphics/mini_window/sequencer — step sequencer window
• graphics/mini_window/mixer — mixer window
• graphics/mini_window/playlist — playlist arrangement
• graphics/mini_window/piano_roll — piano roll window
• graphics/mini_window/track — track detail window

stack

wgpu · winit · CPAL · fontdue · ringbuf · hound · serde/toml · rfd · resvg · dirs · showfile · log/env_logger