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ADR 0007 — Wayland-free Renderer

Status: accepted

Decision

NeferGUI is a rendering library. It builds views, lays them out, styles them with CSS and draws them with Vulkan into DMA-BUF buffers. The library does not own a Wayland connection.

The public entry point is Renderer (NewRenderer, Resize, Input, Invalidate, Render, Released, Wake, Pending, Close). The application owns the Wayland client and runs one owner goroutine:

  • it gives the compositor's linux-dmabuf main_device and format list to NewRenderer;
  • it forwards size, scale and input as plain Input values (keysyms are xkb values; text is UTF-8);
  • Render fills an Output: DMA-BUF planes, syncobj timelines, acquire and release points, damage, cursor shape and input region. All file descriptors stay owned by the Renderer; the application duplicates them before a transport consumes them;
  • an eventfd per buffer becomes readable when the compositor releases it; the application then calls Released.

Layering is application → Wayland client library → bindings. NeferGUI sits beside the client library, not above it. Applications copy plain fields between the two; neither imports the other. github.com/bnema/neferclient is a client toolkit written for this split.

Consequences

  • The module depends only on purego, purego-vulkan, go-text, x/image and x/sys.
  • Clipboard and input-method ports (Clipboard, IME) are interfaces the application implements.
  • Password(true) masks the displayed value of an in-memory editor value.
  • ADR 0003 describes the Vulkan, DMA-BUF and explicit-sync design.
source
1# ADR 0007 — Wayland-free Renderer
2
3Status: accepted
4
5## Decision
6
7NeferGUI is a rendering library. It builds views, lays them out, styles them with CSS and draws them with Vulkan into DMA-BUF buffers. The library does not own a Wayland connection.
8
9The public entry point is `Renderer` (`NewRenderer`, `Resize`, `Input`, `Invalidate`, `Render`, `Released`, `Wake`, `Pending`, `Close`). The application owns the Wayland client and runs one owner goroutine:
10
11- it gives the compositor's linux-dmabuf `main_device` and format list to `NewRenderer`;
12- it forwards size, scale and input as plain `Input` values (keysyms are xkb values; text is UTF-8);
13- `Render` fills an `Output`: DMA-BUF planes, syncobj timelines, acquire and release points, damage, cursor shape and input region. All file descriptors stay owned by the Renderer; the application duplicates them before a transport consumes them;
14- an eventfd per buffer becomes readable when the compositor releases it; the application then calls `Released`.
15
16Layering is application → Wayland client library → bindings. NeferGUI sits beside the client library, not above it. Applications copy plain fields between the two; neither imports the other. [github.com/bnema/neferclient](https://github.com/bnema/neferclient) is a client toolkit written for this split.
17
18## Consequences
19
20- The module depends only on purego, purego-vulkan, go-text, x/image and x/sys.
21- Clipboard and input-method ports (`Clipboard`, `IME`) are interfaces the application implements.
22- `Password(true)` masks the displayed value of an in-memory editor value.
23- ADR 0003 describes the Vulkan, DMA-BUF and explicit-sync design.

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