waylib

Introduction

waylib is a Wayland compositor development library, based on qwlroots, provides a Qt-style development interface. It is designed to be deeply integrated with QtQuick, taking advantage of QtQuick's Scene Graphics model to simplify the complexity of window management. In waylib, it is possible to attach one or multiple Wayland Outputs to a QQuickWindow, and a corresponding Wayland Surface can be attached to a QQuickItem, allowing it to be mixed with QtQuick's graphics components and supporting QRHI for OpenGL and Vulkan compatibility in a single piece of code.

Creating a Wayland compositor using waylib can be simple and efficient, which, on top of wlroots, provides:

• QtQuick-based rendering model
• Qt event model support
• Session management system (under development)
• Client/window group policies (under development)
• Window management abstraction (under development)

Based on the above features, compositor developers need only focus on the business requirements of window management and can develop window compositors as if they were implementing a regular application.

Features

• Support switch different display backend: DRM, Wayland, X11
• Support custom input backend, by default it uses libinput
• Support for rendering cursors in both hardware and software
• Support for X Window cursor file format and theme
• Support for running in environments without dri devices
• Coexistence with Qt platform plug-in system
• Provides QML components

Building

Step 1: Compiling and Installing wlroots and qwlroots

waylib requires the development version (0.17) of wlroots, which needs to be compiled and installed manually. Arch Linux users can install wlroots-git from AUR.

For qwlroots, it is currently recommended to use the version provided as a submodule. However, you can also compile and install it by yourself.

If using the submodule version, please note the following two points:

1. Initialize the submodules when you clone the source code: git clone git@github.com:vioken/waylib.git --recursive
2. Before the final compilation, add the cmake parameter "-DWITH_SUBMODULE_QWLROOTS=ON" to enable the building of the submodule.

Step 2: Installing other dependencies

Debian

# apt install pkg-config qt6-base-private-dev qt6-base-dev-tools qt6-declarative-private-dev wayland-protocols libpixman-1-dev

Archlinux

# pacman -Syu --noconfirm qt6-base qt6-declarative cmake pkgconfig pixman wayland-protocols ninja

NixOS:

It is recommended to manage dependencies using nix-direnv, or you can use the command nix develop to enter the build environment.

You can also packaging by using the command "nix build -v -L".

Step 3: Execute the following commands

cmake -B build -DWITH_SUBMODULE_QWLROOTS=ON
cmake --build build

How to Contribute

This project assumes that you already have experience with Qt and wlroots libraries. In order to better integrate with Qt and wlroots, waylib adheres to Qt's guidelines in terms of interface style, wlroots' modular design philosophy with regards to the underlying design, and Qt's wrapping + layering design for the upper layers that are not directly related to wlroots.

You are free to contribute as much code as you want to this project, provided that you follow the waylib design philosophy and the following types of requirements.

Code Style

• When modifying existing code, the current code style should be respected.
• New code: the part that is closely related to wlroots should follow the code style of wlroots, underscore naming convention should be used for the corresponding slot function; other parts should follow the code style of Qt (https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Coding_Style this link is for reference only. The actual Qt source code shall prevail)
• There is no absolute right or wrong code style, please consider the big picture, and do not rigidly stick to the small details

Code Architecture Guidelines

• The code should be simple and easy to understand.
• Add comments to key nodes whether you change or add new code
• Security > Compatibility > Extensibility >= Performance

Contribution Guideline

• Contribution steps.
  1. First login to your Github account and fork the project
  2. Pull the forked project locally using git clone.
  3. Push the new commit to your project using git push.
  4. commit your code to the upstream project on Github using the Pull Requese feature.
• commit message specification: align with Qt project, use English. Be sure to describe exactly what the commit "does" and "why it was made"
• A commit only does one thing, and the smaller the code changes, the easier it is to accept the commit. For larger code changes, try to split the commit into multiple commits (satisfying the git commit principle as a prerequisite)
• Please do your own testing and code review before committing the code, and submit the PR after confirming that the code is working correctly

Roadmap

• Support of vulkan
• Support Hardware Plane
• Support for virtual devices (remote screen projection, mouse, keyboard multi-device sharing)
• Support multi-platform integration
• Support high refresh rate (120Hz)
• Support variable screen refresh rate