pywm - backend for newm

pywm is an abstraction layer for newm encapsulating all c code.

Basically this is a very tiny compositor built on top of wlroots, making all the assumptions that wlroots does not. On the Python side pywm exposes Wayland clients (XDG and XWayland) as so-called views and passes along all input. This way, handling the positioning of views, animating their movement, ... based on keystrokes or touchpad inputs (i.e. the logical, not performance-critical part of any compositor) is possible Python-side, whereas rendering and all other performance-critical aspects are handled by c code.

Check the Python class PyWM and c struct wm_server for a start, as well as newms Layout.

See also pywm-fullscreen for a trivial implementation opening one application in fullscreen.

Attention

v0.3 with a better renderer implementation supporting blur has been merged into master. There are still some bugs around but I consider it an alpha stage.

Installing

If you install newm via the AUR, pywm is installed automatically.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites for PyWM, apart from Python, are given by wlroots:

python and pip
gcc, meson and ninja
pkg-config
wayland
wayland-protocols
xorg-xwayland
EGL
GLESv2
libdrm
GBM
libinput
xkbcommon
udev
pixman
libseat

Install

Compilation is handled by meson and started automatically via pip (you need to install prerequisites first):

pip3 install git+https://github.com/jbuchermn/pywm

In case of issues, clone the repo and execute meson build && ninja -C build in order to debug.

Configuration

Configuration is handled via key-value pairs given to the PyWM contructor:

Key	Default	Description
`enable_xwayland`	`False`	Boolean: Start `XWayland`
`xkb_model`		String: Keyboard model (`xkb`)
`xkb_layout`		String: Keyboard layout (`xkb`)
`xkb_variant`		String: Keyboard variant (`xkb`)
`xkb_options`		String: Keyboard options (`xkb`)
`outputs`		List of dicts: Output configuration (see next lines)
`output.name`	`""`	String: Name of output to attach config to actual output
`output.scale`	`1.0`	Number: HiDPI scale of output
`output.width`	`0`	Integer: Output width (or zero to use preferred)
`output.height`	`0`	Integer: Output height (or zero to use preferred)
`output.mHz`	`0`	Integer: Output refresh rate in milli Hertz (or zero to use preferred)
`output.pos_x`	`None`	Integer: Output position x in layout (or None to be placed automatically)
`output.pos_y`	`None`	Integer: Output position y in layout (or None to be placed automatically)
`xcursor_theme`		String: `XCursor` theme (if not set, read from; if set, exported to `XCURSOR_THEME`)
`xcursor_size`	`24`	Integer: `XCursor` size (if not set, read from; if set, exported to `XCURSOR_SIZE`)
`tap_to_click`	`True`	Boolean: On tocuhpads use tap for click enter
`natural_scroll`	`True`	Boolean: On touchpads use natural scrolling enter
`focus_follows_mouse`	`True`	Boolean: `Focus` window upon mouse enter
`contstrain_popups_to_toplevel`	`False`	Boolean: Try to keep popups contrained within their window
`encourage_csd`	`True`	Boolean: Encourage clients to show client-side-decorations (see `wlr_server_decoration_manager`)
`debug`	`False`	Boolean: Loglevel debug plus output debug information to stdout on every F1 press
`texture_shaders`	`basic`	String: Shaders to use for texture rendering (see `src/wm/shaders/texture`)
`renderer_mode`	`pywm`	String: Renderer mode, `pywm` (enable pywm renderer, and therefore blur), `wlr` (disable pywm renderer)

Troubleshooting

seatd

Be aware that current wlroots requires seatd under certain circumstances. Example systemd service (be sure to place your user in group _seatd):

[Unit]
Description=Seat management daemon
Documentation=man:seatd(1)

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=seatd -g _seatd
Restart=always
RestartSec=1

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

AlexD97/pywm