Weston

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Weston is a reference implementation of a Wayland compositor. It is part of the Wayland project and can run as an X client or under Linux Kernel Mode Setting (KMS).

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for dev-libs/weston Wayland reference compositor

+X	Add support for X11
+desktop	Enable the desktop shell
+drm	Enable drm compositor support
+gles2	Enable the GLESv2 renderer, not just the x11-libs/pixman-based software fallback
+resize-optimization	Increase performance, allocate more RAM. Recommended to disable on Raspberry Pi
+suid	Enable setuid root program(s)
editor	Install wayland-editor example application
examples	Install examples, usually source code
fullscreen	Enable fullscreen shell
headless	Headless backend and a noop renderer, mainly for testing purposes
ivi	Enable the IVI shell
jpeg	Add JPEG image support
kiosk	Enable the kiosk shell
lcms	Add lcms support (color management engine)
pipewire	Enable virtual remote output with Pipewire on DRM backend
rdp	Enable Remote Desktop Protocol compositor support
remoting	Enable plugin to stream output to remote hosts using media-libs/gstreamer
screen-sharing	Enable screen-sharing through RDP
systemd	Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features like socket activation or session tracking
test	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
vnc	Enable VNC (remote desktop viewer) support
wayland-compositor	Enable Wayland compositor support
webp	Add support for the WebP image format
xwayland	Enable ability support native X11 applications

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-12-15 23:00 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask dev-libs/weston

Usage

The Weston compositor is a minimal and fast compositor and is suitable for many embedded and mobile use cases.

Enable the examples USE flag for building example applications like weston-image or weston-view.

Weston is configured on a local level with the ~/.config/weston.ini file (cf. man 5 weston.ini).

Note
Follow the instructions below if your environment does not define XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. Weston creates its unix socket file in the directory specified by this environment variable and clients use the same variable to find that socket.

The environment variable can be defined in the usual configuration files. For example, if Larry the cow (Larry) sets XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable in his Bash shell's configuration file and he has chosen that the directory will be in /tmp.

FILE /home/larry/.bash_profileSet XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

#!/bin/bash
if test -z "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
    export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/${UID}-runtime-dir
    if ! test -d "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
        mkdir "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
        chmod 0700 "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
    fi
fi

To launch the compositor as a standalone display server, either enable systemd session support for weston-launch (by using systemd and having the systemd-login devel headers at configure time), or add the user to the "weston-launch" group:

root #groupadd weston-launch

root #usermod -a -G weston-launch $USER

Log all the way out of X, then:

root #chown root /usr/bin/weston-launch

root #chmod +s /usr/bin/weston-launch

Launch Weston with the DRM backend on a VT (outside of X):

user $weston-launch

Launch Weston with the DRM backend and XWayland support:

user $weston-launch -- --modules=xwayland.so

Launch Weston (wayland-1) nested in another Weston instance (wayland-0):

user $WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 weston -Swayland-1

From an X terminal, launch Weston with the x11 backend:

user $weston

See also

• Wayland — a simpler replacement for X display server.
• X — an open source implementation of the X Window System.