Core Wayland window system code and protocol
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Xaver Hugl 23445b5246 protocol: define implicit pointer grab
It was mentioned in a lot of places, but never defined, which has caused some
divergent implementations over time. While an implicit pointer grab is active,
some compositors don't allow pointer focus to switch between toplevel and
popups, and some applications assume the grab also works on a subsurface level.

This commit defines implicit pointer grabs to only lock pointer focus to the
current surface tree, but not to any specific (sub)surface or popup.

Signed-off-by: Xaver Hugl <xaver.hugl@kde.org>
2026-02-17 17:51:31 +01:00
.gitlab/issue_templates gitlab: make issue template the default 2023-11-21 15:44:31 +00:00
cursor cursor: Free theme when size check fails to avoid memory leak 2025-08-03 11:36:34 +00:00
doc doc: restore missing image files in docbook 2026-02-12 15:45:57 +01:00
egl egl: Make wayland-egl symbols check depend on wayland_egl 2025-06-08 17:30:55 +00:00
protocol protocol: define implicit pointer grab 2026-02-17 17:51:31 +01:00
src server: document protocol logger callback function 2026-01-03 15:16:50 +01:00
tests tests: cast pid_t and struct timeval fields before printing 2026-01-08 11:09:24 +00:00
.editorconfig editorconfig: follow wayland-protocols XML style 2026-01-22 11:08:28 +02:00
.git-blame-ignore-revs fix .git-blame-ignore-revs revision 2026-02-02 14:00:28 +01:00
.gitignore build: drop autotools 2021-03-05 09:15:04 +00:00
.gitlab-ci.yml doc: add meson.build for book 2026-02-12 15:17:33 +01:00
.mailmap Add a .mailmap file 2023-03-25 11:17:32 -05:00
.triage-policies.yml Add a triage-policies file for bugbot 2023-07-07 21:18:08 +10:00
CONTRIBUTING.md CONTRIBUTING: fix typo "excercising" 2020-12-17 16:03:14 -05:00
COPYING COPYING: Update to MIT Expat License rather than MIT X License 2015-06-12 15:31:21 -07:00
git-blame-ignore-revs add .git-blame-ignore-revs file 2026-02-02 14:54:52 +02:00
meson.build doc: Refactor the build system for complete build dir docs 2025-11-27 17:39:11 +02:00
meson_options.txt doc: make DocBook validation optional 2026-02-04 15:12:04 +00:00
README.md readme: convert to Markdown 2023-02-13 19:57:15 +01:00
release.sh release.sh: Don't push *all* tags 2023-01-16 10:03:54 +00:00
releasing.txt Add release.sh 2022-07-14 08:04:43 +00:00
wayland-scanner.m4 build: check wayland-scanner version 2020-01-16 17:25:06 +01:00
wayland-scanner.mk Pass input/output files as arguments to wayland-scanner 2017-08-18 15:20:24 +03:00

Wayland

Wayland is a project to define a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a library implementation of the protocol. The compositor can be a standalone display server running on Linux kernel modesetting and evdev input devices, an X application, or a wayland client itself. The clients can be traditional applications, X servers (rootless or fullscreen) or other display servers.

The wayland protocol is essentially only about input handling and buffer management. The compositor receives input events and forwards them to the relevant client. The clients creates buffers and renders into them and notifies the compositor when it needs to redraw. The protocol also handles drag and drop, selections, window management and other interactions that must go through the compositor. However, the protocol does not handle rendering, which is one of the features that makes wayland so simple. All clients are expected to handle rendering themselves, typically through cairo or OpenGL.

Building the wayland libraries is fairly simple, aside from libffi, they don't have many dependencies:

$ git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland
$ cd wayland
$ meson build/ --prefix=PREFIX
$ ninja -C build/ install

where PREFIX is where you want to install the libraries.

See https://wayland.freedesktop.org for documentation.