libdecor - A client-side decorations library for Wayland client

libdecor is a library that can help Wayland clients draw window decorations for them. It aims to provide multiple backends that implements the decoration drawing.

Dependencies

Required:

• meson >= 0.47
• ninja
• wayland-client >= 1.18
• wayland-protocols >= 1.15
• wayland-cursor
• cairo
• pangocairo

Recommended:

• dbus-1 (to query current cursor theme)

Optional

• egl (to build EGL example)
• xkbcommon (to build cairo demo)

Install via apt: sudo apt install meson libwayland-dev wayland-protocols libpango1.0-dev libdbus-1-dev libegl-dev libxkbcommon-dev

Install via dnf: sudo dnf install meson wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel pango-devel dbus-devel mesa-libEGL-devel libxkbcommon-devel

Newer meson versions can be installed via pip: pip3 install -U meson.

Build & Install

Quick Start

To build and run the example program:

1. meson build && meson compile -C build
2. LIBDECOR_PLUGIN_DIR=build/src/plugins/cairo/ ./build/demo/libdecor-demo

Release Builds

The library and default plugins can be built and installed via:

1. meson build --buildtype release
2. meson install -C build

where build is the build directory that will be created during this process.

This will install by default to /usr/local/. To change this set the prefix during built, e.g. meson build --buildtype release -Dprefix=$HOME/.local/.

Plugins will be installed into the same directory and from thereon will be selected automatically depending on their precedence. This behaviour can be overridden at runtime by setting the environment variable LIBDECOR_PLUGIN_DIR and pointing it to a directory with a valid plugin.

Debug and Development Builds

During development and when debugging, it is recommended to enable the AddressSanitizer and increase the warning level:

1. meson build -Db_sanitize=address -Dwarning_level=3
2. meson compile -C build

You may have to install libasan6 (apt) or libasan (dnf). Otherwise linking will fail.

By default libdecor will look for plugins in the target directory of the installation. Therefore, when running the demos directly from the build directory, no plugins will be found and the fallback plugin without any decorations will be used.

The search path for plugins can be overridden by the environment variable LIBDECOR_PLUGIN_DIR. To use the cairo plugin, point to the plugin directory:

export LIBDECOR_PLUGIN_DIR=build/src/plugins/cairo/

and run the demo:

./build/demo/libdecor-demo.