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TIL Wayland had an X11 compatibility layer... bless ya'll's hearts! That could not be easy.

chungy 3y ago
The X server is fairly portable, and XWayland is built directly from the X.Org sources. It also has ports to Windows and Mac OS X ...
- Quekid5 3y ago
  Plus... Wayland is literally the work of many of the original X.org devs.
- Arnavion 3y ago
  There are lots of xwayland-specific bits needed to handle it running under a compositor but still acting as a privileged client compared to regular Wayland clients.
kelnos 3y ago
It's probably not as difficult as you'd think. Embedded X servers have existed for a long time (that is, running an X server as a client of another X server), and running them rootless (without displaying a "desktop" of their own) is also nothing new. From there it's just a matter of writing the code to allow it to be a wayland client, which isn't that hard, and then doing translation between the wayland event callbacks and X events. That will at least get you something basic working. There's a bit more to it, of course, and those details are why it's still actively maintained and worked on, but it's not too crazy. The wayland compositor itself does need to special-case Xwayland, which brings some complexity.
maxhille 3y ago
And AFAIK the only part of Xorg where development happens in the recent years.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Not only (standalone Xorg continues to get small features), but likely the most active.
bitwize 3y ago
It doesn't really. Xwayland is pretty much an X server that draws to Wayland instead of directly to the display. You can write an X server that draws to anything: a display, a printer, a Windows or macOS surface, an OpenGL texture... Xwayland is even based on the same Xorg codebase, it's just that the DDX ("device-dependent X") layer used is Wayland-based.
coldtea 3y ago
There was one for Windows, Mac and others, why not Wayland? And wasn't the X11 compatibility layer one of the first things developed for Wayland, since a lot of DEs/apps didn't directly support it yet?

The X server is fairly portable, and XWayland is built directly from the X.Org sources. It also has ports to Windows and Mac OS X ...

Quekid5 3y ago
Plus... Wayland is literally the work of many of the original X.org devs.
Arnavion 3y ago
There are lots of xwayland-specific bits needed to handle it running under a compositor but still acting as a privileged client compared to regular Wayland clients.

kelnos 3y ago

It's probably not as difficult as you'd think. Embedded X servers have existed for a long time (that is, running an X server as a client of another X server), and running them rootless (without displaying a "desktop" of their own) is also nothing new. From there it's just a matter of writing the code to allow it to be a wayland client, which isn't that hard, and then doing translation between the wayland event callbacks and X events. That will at least get you something basic working. There's a bit more to it, of course, and those details are why it's still actively maintained and worked on, but it's not too crazy. The wayland compositor itself does need to special-case Xwayland, which brings some complexity.

maxhille 3y ago

And AFAIK the only part of Xorg where development happens in the recent years.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Not only (standalone Xorg continues to get small features), but likely the most active.

bitwize 3y ago

It doesn't really. Xwayland is pretty much an X server that draws to Wayland instead of directly to the display. You can write an X server that draws to anything: a display, a printer, a Windows or macOS surface, an OpenGL texture... Xwayland is even based on the same Xorg codebase, it's just that the DDX ("device-dependent X") layer used is Wayland-based.

coldtea 3y ago

There was one for Windows, Mac and others, why not Wayland? And wasn't the X11 compatibility layer one of the first things developed for Wayland, since a lot of DEs/apps didn't directly support it yet?