gum-architecture-layers

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name: gum-architecture-layers description: Gum's Forms/Runtime/Renderable layering and which layer owns what. Triggers: "what layer does X belong in", GueDeriving, orienting in a new area of Gum's visual stack, confusing a Runtime with a Renderable.

Gum's Three Layers

Gum's visual stack is three layers, each owned by a different degree of sharing:

Layer	Example	Owns	Shared how
Forms	Button, TextBox	Lookless interaction/state logic	Same .cs file for every backend — FrameworkElement and a growing set of controls arrive via the GumCommon project reference; the rest are still source-linked per backend from MonoGameGum/Forms/
Runtime	SpriteRuntime, TextRuntime, RectangleRuntime (GueDeriving)	Gum layout + property forwarding to a Renderable	Can be linked across backends; some backends keep their own copy instead
Renderable	MonoGame Sprite, raylib draw calls	Actual per-backend drawing code	Effectively never shared — except XNA-likes (MonoGame/KNI/FNA), which are close enough to share

Forms are lookless — the same Button.cs works identically whether its Visual is a MonoGame, Skia, or raylib tree, because Forms only ever talks to a Runtime through Gum's property/layout API, never to backend drawing code directly. See gum-forms-controls for the Forms↔Visual split (a Visual is a Runtime tree rooted in an InteractiveGue).

Runtime-level sharing across backends is real but partial — see gum-runtime-topology for which Runtimes are actually linked vs. forked per backend, and why (#if gates for texture/blend differences). Renderable-level drawing specifics (batching, matrices, effects) are backend-specific; see gum-monogame-rendering for the XNA-family renderer. The Runtime→Renderable property bridge (SetProperty → CustomSetPropertyOnRenderable → renderable) is in gum-property-assignment.

Why "Runtime" types exist

Originally there were only Renderables and GraphicalUiElement — no SpriteRuntime class existed; a "sprite" was just a GraphicalUiElement whose contained renderable happened to be a Sprite, manually assigned. Concrete *Runtime classes (GueDeriving) were added because that manual-assignment pattern was boilerplate-heavy for code-only usage (users just wanted new SpriteRuntime()); they're a convenience layer over the same GUE+renderable pattern, not a structural change to it. Manually building a GUE and assigning it a raw renderable is now rare.

Why CustomSetPropertyOnRenderable exists, and its two dispatch styles

All state/deserialized-project values are applied to a GUE through the string-based SetProperty path (see gum-property-assignment), never set directly on a renderable. But some properties — a texture reference, for example — have no home on GraphicalUiElement itself; they only make sense on the renderable (or, now, the Runtime). CustomSetPropertyOnRenderable exists purely to redirect that string-path value to wherever it actually lives.

Its dispatch tree currently mixes two strategies, and you can't assume which one a given property uses without checking:

• Renderable-type dispatch (renderableIpso is LineCircle, is LinePolygon, etc.) — the original style, predating Runtime types, that reaches straight into the renderable.
• Runtime-type dispatch (graphicalUiElement is CircleRuntime, is SpriteRuntime, routing into TrySetPropertyOn*Runtime) — sets the typed Runtime property instead, added where a renderable-type-only dispatch would be ambiguous or wrong (e.g. CircleRuntime/RectangleRuntime own two renderable slots — fill and stroke — so dispatching on the contained renderable's type can land a value on the wrong slot).

Direction: prefer Runtime-type dispatch for new branches. Runtimes are the layer that's actually portable across backends (see the table above); renderables mostly aren't. Dispatching on renderable type bets that backend divergence stays local to that #if; dispatching on Runtime type bets the Runtime's property surface is unifiable — and pays off further as more Runtimes get shared across backends, since a Runtime-typed branch becomes shared code too. Where a property is genuinely backend-specific, Runtime-type dispatch doesn't eliminate the #if but does relocate it into the Runtime class, concentrating backend variance in one place instead of scattering it through this dispatch tree.

This direction relies on the GUE actually being the concrete Runtime type at dispatch time, which it is for the common case: ElementSaveExtensions.CreateGueForElement tries RegisterGueInstantiation<T>'s strongly-typed factories first — the doc comment on that method calls it "the primary way Gum builds the visual tree" — and only falls back to the renderable-only CustomCreateGraphicalComponentFunc path (Gum.Wireframe.FallbackRenderableFactory) when no typed wrapper is registered for that base type.

For the concrete decision and the phased order to converge the two CustomSetPropertyOnRenderable files onto this direction (runtime property parity → redispatch → diff-converge → conditionally link), see Direction/decisions/0007-converge-skia-property-dispatch.md and 0008-sequence-runtime-dispatch-convergence.md.