Wayland support?

[trading-peter]

Hey quick question. Are there plans to support wayland in the future?
Thank you for you time :)

[changkun]

Hi, thanks for writing it up. Yes, it should be a support to get in, the problem for me is I do not have Wayland to test it properly. VM might be an option but the disk space is quite tight at the moment :)

[changkun]

I took a quick look at Wayland systems. It looks like it is fully compatible with X11 and the clipboard package works if we just install libx11-dev.

It seems we don't have to do anything else here.

Did I misunderstand anything?

[changkun]

Looks like nothing is needed for Wayland porting. Close.

(clarify if anything was a misunderstanding.)

[wakatara]

@changkun

Can you elaborate a bit more on how this library supports wayland if I am trying to build an app to centralize (and act as a dispatcher - think greenclip on i3/xwindows or the copy/paste and snippets functionality of Alfred on OSX), copies and pastes from sway window manger on wayland.

Is it just the api for libx11-dev is the same if you are sending messages from wayland to the library, or it's actually using xwindows conventions (which for me would be a no go because of the xwindows security model which does not insulate apps.).

lemme know. Still in the investigative stage of how to build this, so it might just be me not understanding how the mechanics of this works on X11 or Wayland...

thanks!

[changkun]

@wakatara Thanks for the inquiry. In fact, I am still suspect the support regarding Wayland support. As I remember from the last time, I tested the demo cli gclip on Wayland (Switched to Wayland on an X11 Ubuntu). After I installed the libx11-dev, the gclip is able to build and could work, although I lack the understanding of if x11 is running on the background or not.

Feel free to let me know if the package could really work from different feedback, as I lack much experience with Wayland systems, but also interested to support it if not yet.

[microo8]

Just an idea. Have you considered using wl-clipboard?

Then just check if we are on wayland:

if os.Getenv("WAYLAND_DISPLAY") != "" {
     //call wl-clipboard with os/exec
}

[changkun]

Yes, I know about wl-clipboard, but it would be an external dependency.

Although it is a temporary solution, I don't have a Wayland environment for testing.

[microo8]

So @emersion has pointed me to his blog post: https://emersion.fr/blog/2020/wayland-clipboard-drag-and-drop/
I'll try to do something from it. But first a quick question:

1. Can I introduce a new dependency: libwayland (I try to load it dynamically as the libX11)
2. In the Init() function, can I first try to load libwayland and if it fails, then libX11?

EDIT: new dependency for libwayland, not for wlroots

[emersion]

Can I introduce a new dependency: wlroots (I try to load it dynamically as the libX11)

This really shouldn't be necessary. wlroots is a library for building compositors, clients must not depend on it.

[changkun]

1. Can I introduce a new dependency: libwayland (I try to load it dynamically as the libX11)
2. In the Init() function, can I first try to load wlroots and if it fails, then libX11?

This sounds like a nice plan. Since I am not entirely familiar with libwayland, is it the official dev distribution for wayland support?
Another case is: What happens if a user is using X but also installed libwayland? When we load libwayland before libX11. In this case would result a successful libwayland loading, but I guess the user cannot really use the package as the user's desktop environment is X. Is there a way to determine which desktop environment is used at the moment? Moreover, what happens if user changes the desktop environment (is this a possible case)?

[emersion]

is it the official dev distribution for wayland support?

libwayland is the official C library to connect to a Wayland compositor. It's like libX11 or libxcb.

What happens if a user is using X but also installed libwayland?

The WAYLAND_DISPLAY env variable will be set if the user is inside a Wayland session.

Moreover, what happens if user changes the desktop environment (is this a possible case)?

Not really, not without quitting the terminal emulator.

[microo8]

So I'll get to it :)

[laineeded]

Hello, are there any plans to support wayland soon? or just implementing a temporary solution? thanks!