picom

This is a development branch, bugs to be expected
This is forked from the original Compton because it seems to have become unmaintained .
The stream battle plan of this fork is to refactor it to make the code potential to maintain, so potential contributors wo n’t be scared away when they take a look at the code .
We besides try to fix bugs.

The original README can be found here

Call for testers

This iris enables the refactored/partially rewrite backends .
presently, new backends feature better vsync with the xrender backend and improved input interim with the glx backend ( for non-NVIDIA users ). The operation should be on equality with the old backends .
New backend features will lone be implemented on the modern backends from nowadays on, and the old backends will finally be phased out after the fresh backends stabilize .
To test the modern backends, add the --experimental-backends flag to the instruction you use to run picom. This sag is not available from the shape file .
To report issues with the modern backends, please country explicitly you are using the new backends in your report .

Rename

Rationale

Since the origin of this fork, the being of two compton repositories has caused some number of confusions. chiefly, people will report issues of this fork to the original compton, or report issues of the original compton here. Later, when distros started packaging this fork of compton, some wanted to differentiate the newer compton from the older interpretation. They found themselves having no choice but to invent a name for this crotch. This is less than ideal since this has the electric potential to cause more confusions among users .
therefore, we decided to move this branch to a new name. personally, I consider this more than justified since this adaptation of compton has gone through significant changes since it was forked .

The name

The criteria for a good list were

0. Being short, so it’s easy to remember.
1. Pronounceability, again, helps memorability
2. Searchability, so when people search the name, it’s easy for them to find this repository.

Of course, choosing a name is never easy, and there is no apparent way to objectively evaluate the names. Yet, we have to solve the aforesaid problems vitamin a soon as potential .
In the end, we picked picom ( a portmanteau of pico and composite ) as our new diagnose. This identify might not be perfective, but is what we will move fore with unless there ‘s a compel reason not to .

Migration

Following the deprecation process, migration to the new name will be broken into 3 steps :

1. All mentions of compton will be updated to picom in the code base. compton will still be installed, but only as a symlink to picom. When picom is launched via the symlink, a warning message is printed, alerting the user to migrate. Similarly, the old configuration file names and dbus interface names will still be accepted but warned.
2. 3 major releases after step 1, the warning messages will be prompted to error messages and picom will not start when launched via the symlink.
3. 3 major releases after step 2, the symlink will be removed.

The dbus interface and avail names are unaltered, so no migration needed for that .

Change Log

See Releases

Build

Dependencies

Assuming you already have all the common build tools installed ( e.g. gcc, python, meson, ninja, etc. ), you still need :

• libx11
• libx11-xcb
• libXext
• xproto
• xcb
• xcb-damage
• xcb-xfixes
• xcb-shape
• xcb-renderutil
• xcb-render
• xcb-randr
• xcb-composite
• xcb-image
• xcb-present
• xcb-xinerama
• xcb-glx
• pixman
• libdbus (optional, disable with the -Ddbus=false meson configure flag)
• libconfig (optional, disable with the -Dconfig_file=false meson configure flag)
• libGL (optional, disable with the -Dopengl=false meson configure flag)
• libpcre (optional, disable with the -Dregex=false meson configure flag)
• libev
• uthash

On Debian based distributions ( e.g. Ubuntu ), the number of needed packages are

libxext-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-damage0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-render-util0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-present-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxcb-glx0-dev libpixman-1-dev libdbus-1-dev libconfig-dev libgl1-mesa-dev  libpcre2-dev  libevdev-dev uthash-dev libev-dev libx11-xcb-dev

To build the documents, you need asciidoc

To build

$ git submodule update --init --recursive
$ meson --buildtype=release . build
$ ninja -C build

Built binary can be found in build/src

If you have libraries and/or headers installed at non-default localization ( e.g. under /usr/local/ ), you might need to tell meson about them, since meson does n’t look for dependencies there by default .
You can do that by setting the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS environment variables when running meson. Like this :

$ LDFLAGS= 
"
 -L/path/to/libraries 
"
 CPPFLAGS= 
"
 -I/path/to/headers 
"
 meson --buildtype=release . build

As an model, on FreeBSD, you might have to run meson with :

$ LDFLAGS= 
"
 -L/usr/local/include 
"
 CPPFLAGS= 
"
 -I/usr/local/include 
"
 meson --buildtype=release . build
$ ninja -C build

To install

$ ninja -C build install

Default install prefix is /usr/local, you can change it with meson configure -Dprefix= build

How to Contribute

Code

You can look at the Projects page, and see if there is anything that interests you. Or you can take a front at the Issues.

even if you do n’t want to contribute code, you can still contribute by compiling and running this ramify, and report any issue you can find .
Contributions to the documents and wiki will besides be appreciated .

Contributors

See CONTRIBUTORS