this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Wlroots 0.17.0 released (gitlab.freedesktop.org)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Release highlights:

  • New protocol implementations:

    • content-type-v1 to tag surfaces with their content type (audio, video, game, etc).
    • xwayland-shell-v1 to improve XWayland reliability.
    • wp-fractional-scale-v1 to allow clients to submit buffers with a non-integer scale factor matching the output.
    • tearing-control to allow clients to opt-in for tearing page-flips.
    • security-context-v1 to identify clients running in sandboxes.
    • cursor-shape-v1 for server-side cursor themes.

  • Introduce a new output layers API to leverage KMS planes.

  • Add a new renderer API with improved design and performance. Add an API to query the time taken to render.

  • Continued work on the Vulkan renderer: add more RGB formats, add YUV buffers, add interoperability with implicit synchronization instead of blocking.

  • Add support for the new wl_surface.preferred_buffer_{scale,transform} events.

  • Improved scene-graph, including support for linux-dmabuf feedback and clipping surfaces.

  • Improved wlr_cursor which now keeps track of the current cursor image.

  • Add an implementation of the wl_shm interface, replacing libwayland's for improved reliability and performance.

  • The Wayland backend supports embedding a wlroots compositor inside an existing Wayland client.

  • wl_surface roles have been refactored.

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[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

How would wlroots relate to the compositors such as KWin & GNOME Shell?

[–] Laser@feddit.de 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

As pointed out, they don't use it. However, there are loose plan for KWin to migrate to wlroots one day, and in fact a hostile fork exists that is exactly that (KWinFT). So a compositor can make use of wlroots to implement Wayland functionality, sway for example does exactly that, unsurprisingly since they're sister projects by the same author.

It should be noted that libwayland (mentioned in the patch notes) also exist, and wlroot actually depends on it, so I guess libwayland is like the lower level stuff while wlroots saves you some work to integrate libwayland into your compositor; the motto is "Pluggable, composable, unopinionated modules for building a Wayland compositor; or about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write anyway."

[–] ultra@feddit.ro 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just a note, you said that libwayland is a higher level abstraction for libwayland.

[–] starman@programming.dev 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

libwayland is like the lower level stuff while libwayland saves you some work to integrate libwayland

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 9 months ago

Makes sense. You have to factor in libwayland though.

[–] Laser@feddit.de 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks, I corrected it

[–] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As far as I know, it wouldn't - I do not believe KWin nor Mutter is built on top of wlroots.

[–] FarLine99@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

They are not

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago

wlroots is a library that can be used to implement a compositor like KWin or mutter (GNOME). In practice wlroots is used in Sway, Hyprland, river, and more.

What wlroots-based compositors, KWin, and mutter share is that they implement a similar set of the display protocol Wayland. E.g. KWin and Sway implement the Wayland extension wlr_layer_shell