xref: /openbmc/openbmc/poky/documentation/dev-manual/wayland.rst (revision 517393d9)

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-2.0-UK

Using Wayland and Weston
************************

:wikipedia:`Wayland <Wayland_(display_server_protocol)>`
is a computer display server protocol that provides a method for
compositing window managers to communicate directly with applications
and video hardware and expects them to communicate with input hardware
using other libraries. Using Wayland with supporting targets can result
in better control over graphics frame rendering than an application
might otherwise achieve.

The Yocto Project provides the Wayland protocol libraries and the
reference :wikipedia:`Weston <Wayland_(display_server_protocol)#Weston>`
compositor as part of its release. You can find the integrated packages
in the ``meta`` layer of the :term:`Source Directory`.
Specifically, you
can find the recipes that build both Wayland and Weston at
``meta/recipes-graphics/wayland``.

You can build both the Wayland and Weston packages for use only with targets
that accept the :wikipedia:`Mesa 3D and Direct Rendering Infrastructure
<Mesa_(computer_graphics)>`, which is also known as Mesa DRI. This implies that
you cannot build and use the packages if your target uses, for example, the
Intel Embedded Media and Graphics Driver (Intel EMGD) that overrides Mesa DRI.

.. note::

   Due to lack of EGL support, Weston 1.0.3 will not run directly on the
   emulated QEMU hardware. However, this version of Weston will run
   under X emulation without issues.

This section describes what you need to do to implement Wayland and use
the Weston compositor when building an image for a supporting target.

Enabling Wayland in an Image
============================

To enable Wayland, you need to enable it to be built and enable it to be
included (installed) in the image.

Building Wayland
----------------

To cause Mesa to build the ``wayland-egl`` platform and Weston to build
Wayland with Kernel Mode Setting
(`KMS <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_Mode_Setting>`__)
support, include the "wayland" flag in the
:term:`DISTRO_FEATURES`
statement in your ``local.conf`` file::

   DISTRO_FEATURES:append = " wayland"

.. note::

   If X11 has been enabled elsewhere, Weston will build Wayland with X11
   support

Installing Wayland and Weston
-----------------------------

To install the Wayland feature into an image, you must include the
following
:term:`CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL`
statement in your ``local.conf`` file::

   CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL += "wayland weston"

Running Weston
==============

To run Weston inside X11, enabling it as described earlier and building
a Sato image is sufficient. If you are running your image under Sato, a
Weston Launcher appears in the "Utility" category.

Alternatively, you can run Weston through the command-line interpretor
(CLI), which is better suited for development work. To run Weston under
the CLI, you need to do the following after your image is built:

#. Run these commands to export ``XDG_RUNTIME_DIR``::

      mkdir -p /tmp/$USER-weston
      chmod 0700 /tmp/$USER-weston
      export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/$USER-weston

#. Launch Weston in the shell::

      weston