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# dwl - dwm for Wayland
Join us on our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/jJxZnrGPWN)!
dwl is a compact, hackable compositor for Wayland based on [wlroots](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots). It is intended to fill the same space in the Wayland world that dwm does in X11, primarily in terms of philosophy, and secondarily in terms of functionality. Like dwm, dwl is:
- Easy to understand, hack on, and extend with patches
- One C source file (or a very small number) configurable via `config.h`
- Limited to 2000 SLOC to promote hackability
- Tied to as few external dependencies as possible
dwl is not meant to provide every feature under the sun. Instead, like dwm, it sticks to features which are necessary, simple, and straightforward to implement given the base on which it is built. Implemented default features are:
- Any features provided by dwm/Xlib: simple window borders, tags, keybindings, client rules, mouse move/resize. Providing a built-in status bar is an exception to this goal, to avoid dependencies on font rendering and/or drawing libraries when an external bar could work well.
- Configurable multi-monitor layout support, including position and rotation
- Configurable HiDPI/multi-DPI support
- Provide information to external status bars via stdout/stdin
- Urgency hints via xdg-activate protocol
- Various Wayland protocols
- XWayland support as provided by wlroots (can be enabled in `config.mk`)
- Zero flickering - Wayland users naturally expect that "every frame is perfect"
Features under consideration (possibly as patches) are:
- Protocols made trivial by wlroots
- Implement the input-inhibitor protocol to support screen lockers
- Implement the idle-inhibit protocol which lets applications such as mpv disable idle monitoring
- Layer shell popups (used by Waybar)
- Basic yes/no damage tracking to avoid needless redraws
- More in-depth damage region tracking ([which may improve power usage](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/))
- Implement the text-input and input-method protocols to support IME once ibus implements input-method v2 (see https://github.com/ibus/ibus/pull/2256 and https://github.com/djpohly/dwl/pull/12)
Feature *non-goals* for the main codebase include:
- Client-side decoration (any more than is necessary to tell the clients not to)
- Client-initiated window management, such as move, resize, and close, which can be done through the compositor
- Animations and visual effects
## Building dwl
dwl has only two dependencies: wlroots and wayland-protocols. Simply install these (and their `-devel` versions if your distro has separate development packages) and run `make`. If you wish to build against a Git version of wlroots, check out the [wlroots-next branch](https://github.com/djpohly/dwl/tree/wlroots-next).
To enable XWayland, you should also install xorg-xwayland and uncomment its flag in `config.mk`.
## Configuration
All configuration is done by editing `config.h` and recompiling, in the same manner as dwm. There is no way to separately restart the window manager in Wayland without restarting the entire display server, so any changes will take effect the next time dwl is executed.
As in the dwm community, we encourage users to share patches they have created. Check out the [patches page on our wiki](https://github.com/djpohly/dwl/wiki/Patches)!
## Running dwl
dwl can be run on any of the backends supported by wlroots. This means you can run it as a separate window inside either an X11 or Wayland session, as well as directly from a VT console. Depending on your distro's setup, you may need to add your user to the `video` and `input` groups before you can run dwl on a VT.
When dwl is run with no arguments, it will launch the server and begin handling any shortcuts configured in `config.h`. There is no status bar or other decoration initially; these are instead clients that can be run within the Wayland session.
If you would like to run a script or command automatically at startup, you can specify the command using the `-s` option. The argument to this option will be parsed as a shell command (using `sh -c`) and can serve a similar function to `.xinitrc`. Unlike `.xinitrc`, the display server will not shut down when this process terminates. Instead, as dwl is shutting down, it will send this process a SIGTERM and wait for it to terminate (if it hasn't already). This makes it ideal for execing into a user service manager like [s6](https://skarnet.org/software/s6/), [anopa](https://jjacky.com/anopa/), [runit](http://smarden.org/runit/faq.html#userservices), or [`systemd --user`](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User).
Note: The `-s` command is run as a *child process* of dwl, which means that it does not have the ability to affect the environment of dwl or of any processes that it spawns. If you need to set environment variables that affect the entire dwl session (such as `XDG_RUNTIME_DIR` in the note below), these must be set prior to running dwl.
Note: Wayland requires a valid `XDG_RUNTIME_DIR`, which is usually set up by a session manager such as `elogind` or `systemd-logind`. If your system doesn't do this automatically, you will need to configure it prior to launching `dwl`, e.g.:
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/xdg-runtime-$(id -u)
mkdir -p $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
dwl
## Replacements for X applications
You can find a [list of Wayland applications on the sway wiki](https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/i3-Migration-Guide).
## IRC channel
dwl's IRC channel is #dwl on irc.freenode.net.
## Acknowledgements
dwl began by extending the TinyWL example provided (CC0) by the sway/wlroots developers. This was made possible in many cases by looking at how sway accomplished something, then trying to do the same in as suckless a way as possible.
Many thanks to suckless.org and the dwm developers and community for the inspiration, and to the various contributors to the project, including:
- Alexander Courtis for the XWayland implementation
- Guido Cella for the layer-shell protocol implementation, patch maintenance, and for helping to keep the project running
- Stivvo for output management and fullscreen support, and patch maintenance
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