Module smithay::wayland[−][src]

Expand description

Protocol-related utilities

This module contains several handlers to manage the Wayland protocol and the clients.

General structure

Most utilities provided in this module work in the same way:

An init function or method will take the wayland display as argument and insert one or more globals into it.
If you want to remove a previously inserted global, just call the destroy() method on the associated Global. If you don’t plan to destroy the global at all, you don’t need to bother keeping the Global around.

Some of these modules require you to provide a callback that is invoked for some client requests that your logic needs to handle. In most cases these callback are given as input an enum specifying the event that occurred, as well as the DispatchData from wayland_server.

Provided helpers

Core functionality

The most fundamental module is the compositor module, which provides the necessary logic to handle the fundamental component by which clients build their windows: surfaces. Following this, the shell module contains the logic allowing clients to use their surface to build concrete windows with the usual interactions. Different kind of shells exist, but in general you will want to support at least the xdg variant, which is the standard used by most applications.

Then, the seat module contains logic related to input handling. These helpers are used to forward input (such as pointer action or keystrokes) to clients, and manage the input focus of clients. Tightly coupled with it is the data_device module, which handles cross-client interactions such as accessing the clipboard, or drag’n’drop actions.

The shm module provides the necessary logic for client to provide buffers defining the contents of their windows using shared memory. This is the main mechanism used by clients that are not hardware accelerated. As a complement, the dmabuf module provides support hardware-accelerated clients; it is tightly linked to the backend::allocator module.

The output module helps forwarding to clients information about the display monitors that are available. This notably plays a key role in HiDPI handling, and more generally notifying clients about whether they are currently visible or not (allowing them to stop drawing if they are not, for example).

Experimental helpers

The explicit_synchronization module provides helpers to give clients fine-grained control over the synchronization for accessing graphics buffer with the compositor, for low-latency rendering. It is however still experimental, and largely untested.