Ubuntu Manpage: weston - the reference Wayland server

NAME

       weston - the reference Wayland server

SYNOPSIS

       weston

DESCRIPTION

       weston  is the reference implementation of a Wayland server. A Wayland server is a display
       server, a window manager, and a compositor all in one.  Weston  has  several  backends  as
       loadable modules: it can run on Linux KMS (kernel modesetting via DRM), as an X client, or
       inside another Wayland server instance.

       Weston supports fundamentally different  graphical  user  interface  paradigms  via  shell
       plugins. Two plugins are provided: the desktop shell, and the tablet shell.

       When  weston  is started as the first windowing system (i.e. not under X nor under another
       Wayland server), it should be done  with  the  command  weston-launch  to  set  up  proper
       privileged access to devices. If your system supports the logind D-Bus API and the support
       has been built into weston as well, it is possible to start weston with just weston.

       Weston also supports X clients via XWayland, see below.

BACKENDS

       drm-backend.so
              The DRM backend uses Linux KMS for output and evdev devices for input.  It supports
              multiple monitors in a unified desktop with DPMS. See weston-drm(7), if installed.

       wayland-backend.so
              The  Wayland  backend  runs on another Wayland server, a different Weston instance,
              for example. Weston shows up as a single desktop window on the parent server.

       x11-backend.so
              The X11 backend runs on an X server. Each Weston output becomes an X  window.  This
              is  a  cheap  way  to  test  multi-monitor  support of a Wayland shell, desktop, or
              applications.

       rdp-backend.so
              The RDP backend runs in memory without the need of graphical  hardware.  Access  to
              the  desktop  is done by using the RDP protocol. Each connecting client has its own
              seat making it a cheap way  to  test  multi-seat  support.  See  weston-rdp(7),  if
              installed.

SHELLS

       Each  of these shells have its own public protocol interface for clients.  This means that
       a client must be specifically written for a shell protocol, otherwise it will not work.

       Desktop shell
              Desktop shell is like a modern X desktop environment, concentrating on  traditional
              keyboard and mouse user interfaces and the familiar desktop-like window management.
              Desktop shell consists of the shell plugin desktop-shell.so and the special  client
              weston-desktop-shell  which  provides  the  wallpaper,  panel,  and  screen locking
              dialog.

       Fullscreen shell
              Fullscreen shell is intended for a client that needs to take  over  whole  outputs,
              often  all  outputs.  This  is primarily intended for running another compositor on
              Weston. The other compositor does not need to handle  any  platform-specifics  like
              DRM/KMS or evdev/libinput.  The shell consists only of the shell plugin fullscreen-
              shell.so.

       IVI-shell
              In-vehicle infotainment shell is a special purpose  shell  that  exposes  a  GENIVI
              Layer  Manager  compatible  API  to  controller  modules,  and  a very simple shell
              protocol towards clients. IVI-shell starts with loading ivi-shell.so,  and  then  a
              controller module which may launch helper clients.

XWAYLAND

       XWayland  requires a special X.org server to be installed. This X server will connect to a
       Wayland server as a Wayland client, and X clients will connect to the X  server.  XWayland
       provides backwards compatibility to X applications in a Wayland stack.

       XWayland  is  activated  by  instructing weston to load the XWayland module, see EXAMPLES.
       Weston starts listening on a new X display socket,  and  exports  it  in  the  environment
       variable DISPLAY.  When the first X client connects, Weston launches a special X server as
       a Wayland client to handle the X client and all future X clients.

       It has also its own X window manager where cursor themes and sizes  can  be  chosen  using
       XCURSOR_PATH and XCURSOR_SIZE environment variables. See ENVIRONMENT.

OPTIONS

Weston core options:
-Bbackend.so, --backend=backend.so
Load backend.so instead of the default backend. The file is searched for in
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/weston, or you can pass an absolute path. The default
backend is drm-backend.so unless the environment suggests otherwise, see DISPLAY
and WAYLAND_DISPLAY.

-cconfig.ini, --config=config.ini
Load config.ini instead of weston.ini. The argument can also be an absolute path
starting with a /. If the path is not absolute, it will be searched in the normal
config paths, see weston.ini(5). If also --no-config is given, no configuration
file will be read.

--debug
Enable debug protocol extension weston_debug_v1 which any client can use to receive
debugging messages from the compositor.

WARNING: This is risky for two reasons. First, a client may cause a denial-of-
service blocking the compositor by providing an unsuitable file descriptor, and
second, the debug messages may expose sensitive information. Additionally this
will expose weston-screenshooter interface allowing the user to take screenshots of
the outputs using weston-screenshooter application, which can lead to silently
leaking the output contents. This option should not be used in production.

-lscope1,scope2, --logger-scopes=scope1,scope2
Specify to which log scopes should subscribe to. When no scopes are supplied, the
log "log" scope will be subscribed by default. Useful to control which streams to
write data into the logger and can be helpful in diagnosing early start-up code.

-fscope1,scope2, --flight-rec-scopes=scope1,scope2
Specify to which scopes should subscribe to. Useful to control which streams to
write data into the flight recorder. Flight recorder has limited space, once the
flight recorder is full new data will overwrite the old data. Without any scopes
specified, it subscribes to 'log' and 'drm-backend' scopes.

--version
Print the program version.

-h, --help
Print a summary of command line options, and quit.

-iN, --idle-time=N
Set the idle timeout to N seconds. The default timeout is 300 seconds. When there
has not been any user input for the idle timeout, Weston enters an inactive mode.
The screen fades to black, monitors may switch off, and the shell may lock the
session. A value of 0 effectively disables the timeout.

--log=file.log
Append log messages to the file file.log instead of writing them to stderr.

--xwayland
Ask Weston to load the XWayland module.

--modules=module1.so,module2.so
Load the comma-separated list of modules. Only used by the test suite. The file is
searched for in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/weston, or you can pass an absolute path.

--no-config
Do not read weston.ini for the compositor. Avoids e.g. loading compositor modules
via the configuration file, which is useful for unit tests.

-Sname, --socket=name
Weston will listen in the Wayland socket called name. Weston will export
WAYLAND_DISPLAY with this value in the environment for all child processes to allow
them to connect to the right server automatically.

--wait-for-debugger
Raises SIGSTOP before initializing the compositor. This allows the user to attach
with a debugger and continue execution by sending SIGCONT. This is useful for
debugging a crash on start-up when it would be inconvenient to launch weston
directly from a debugger. There is also a weston.ini option to do the same.

DRM backend options:
See weston-drm(7).

Wayland backend options:
--display=display
Name of the Wayland display to connect to, see also WAYLAND_DISPLAY of the
environment.

--fullscreen
Create a single fullscreen output

--output-count=N
Create N Wayland windows to emulate the same number of outputs.

--width=W, --height=H
Make all outputs have a size of WxH pixels.

--scale=N
Give all outputs a scale factor of N.

--use-pixman
Use the pixman renderer. By default, weston will try to use EGL and GLES2 for
rendering and will fall back to the pixman-based renderer for software compositing
if EGL cannot be used. Passing this option will force weston to use the pixman
renderer.

X11 backend options:
--fullscreen

--no-input
Do not provide any input devices. Used for testing input-less Weston.

--output-count=N
Create N X windows to emulate the same number of outputs.

--width=W, --height=H
Make the default size of each X window WxH pixels.

--scale=N
Give all outputs a scale factor of N.

--use-pixman
Use the pixman renderer. By default weston will try to use EGL and GLES2 for
rendering. Passing this option will make weston use the pixman library for
software compsiting.

RDP backend options:
See weston-rdp(7).

FILES

       If the environment variable is set, the configuration file is  read  from  the  respective
       path.

       $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/weston.ini
       $HOME/.config/weston.ini

ENVIRONMENT

DISPLAY
The X display. If DISPLAY is set, and WAYLAND_DISPLAY is not set, the default
backend becomes x11-backend.so.

WAYLAND_DEBUG
If set to any value, causes libwayland to print the live protocol to stderr.

WAYLAND_DISPLAY
The name of the display (socket) of an already running Wayland server, without the
path. The directory path is always taken from XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. If WAYLAND_DISPLAY
is not set, the socket name is "wayland-0".

If WAYLAND_DISPLAY is already set, the default backend becomes wayland-backend.so.
This allows launching Weston as a nested server.

WAYLAND_SOCKET
For Wayland clients, holds the file descriptor of an open local socket to a Wayland
server.

WESTON_CONFIG_FILE
Weston sets this variable to the absolute path of the configuration file it loads,
or to the empty string if no file is used. Programs that use weston.ini will read
the file specified by this variable instead, or do not read any file if it is
empty. Unset variable causes falling back to the default name weston.ini.

XCURSOR_PATH
Set the list of paths to look for cursors in. It changes both libwayland-cursor and
libXcursor, so it affects both Wayland and X11 based clients. See xcursor (3).

XCURSOR_SIZE
This variable can be set for choosing an specific size of cursor. Affect Wayland
and X11 clients. See xcursor (3).

XDG_CONFIG_HOME
If set, specifies the directory where to look for weston.ini.

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
The directory for Weston's socket and lock files. Wayland clients will
automatically use this.

BUGS

       Bugs should be reported to the freedesktop.org  bugzilla  at  https://bugs.freedesktop.org
       with product "Wayland" and component "weston".

WWW

       http://wayland.freedesktop.org/

EXAMPLES

       Launch Weston with the DRM backend on a VT
              weston-launch

       Launch Weston with the DRM backend and XWayland support
              weston-launch -- --xwayland

       Launch Weston (wayland-1) nested in another Weston instance (wayland-0)
              WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 weston -Swayland-1

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