Notices by Ivan Molodetskikh (yalter@mastodon.online)

something odd about these windows

#niri

After a full day of writing release notes (god how'd it take so long 😫), niri v25.01 is out with Floating Windows and Working Layer-Shell Desktop Icons and Layer-Shell Screencast Blocking Out and so many more improvements! Yes, you read that right, we finally escaped zerover! I feel that niri is now ready to graduate from v0.1 :ablobcatbongo:

Read here and download when your distribution package updates: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.01

#niri #smithay #wayland #rust

Alright, I think I got all of the important things in for the next niri release. Today I updated Smithay for the DRM compositor changes, and added a workaround for a panic when you have two monitors with exactly matching make/model/serial.

I'll give it a week of testing (if you run niri-git, please report any problems) and if all goes well, tag next Saturday.

There are a few PRs I'll try to review in time, but they're fairly self contained.

#niri

I spent today figuring out the remaining layer-shell keyboard focus problems, and I've got it all working! Pop-ups now render above windows, and bottom/background layers can receive on-demand focus.

Effectively, this makes the desktop icons components from @LXQt or @xfce just work on niri!

#niri

Early happy new year! 🎉

Thanks to everyone who helped with testing and ideas!

#niri

Turns out, there's a lot of details to get right when implementing a floating window space. For example, dialog windows should always show above their parent window. Otherwise, it's easy to lose them under the (usually much bigger) parent.

The WIP floating branch in niri now handles this properly, even for xdg-desktop-portal dialogs (like file chooser) as long as the app correctly parents them via xdg-foreign.

#niri

While trying to make this work, I realized that this is the time when I *really really* want to be able to test this stuff. So I got on a sidetrack adventure to write testing infra for running real Wayland clients inside unit tests.

I've got it working! In these tests, I'm creating a new niri instance along with test clients, all on the same test-local event loop. No global state, no threads needed.

What's really cool is that this lets me test the weirdest client-server event timings.

#niri

In the tiling layout, niri is constantly asking windows to assume their expected size. In contrast, floating windows should be able to freely change size as they see fit.

The logic turns out to be quite tricky. On the one hand we want a window to keep its latest size, but on the other we still want to be able to resize the window, which means asking it for a different size. The window can take a second to respond, or respond with a yet another size, and nothing must break.

#niri

Another piece of the floating puzzle: keeping windows on screen. When you change your monitor scale or resolution, you don't want your floating windows to suddenly go unreachable behind the monitor's new borders.

Here I'm resizing a nested niri with three windows, simulating resolution changes. No matter what I do, they always remain partially visible and reachable. Even for more unusual cases like trying to resize a window into out of bounds.

#niri

The diff is 85 lines of change and 243 lines of new tests, and I already found a few weirder edge cases that I've missed. No way I could do this well without that client-server testing setup that I posted about yesterday.

Btw I pushed the testing setup if you're curious, along with the entirety of 1215 snapshot files for a powerset of new window workspace/output target settings: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/commit/771ea1e81557ffe7af9cbdbec161601575b64d81

The WIP floating branch caused them to update in several commits already.

#niri

This morning I worked on remembering the size for floating windows when they go to the tiling layout and back.

The whole sizing code must be at the top by logic complexity in niri. I have to juggle, all at once:

- new size I haven't sent to the window yet,
- size changes I sent, but window hasn't acked yet (0, 1, or more in-flight),
- size change window acked but hasn't committed for yet,
- size change window acked and responded to with a commit (maybe with a different size entirely).

#niri

After three weeks of hard work, I am undrafting the floating window PR in niri. Please give it thorough testing and report any bugs or issues!

https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/871

#niri

The big 1215 snapshot test powerset (actually it already grew to 1695) continues to prove its worth. Just finished a big +495 -508 cleanup of the window opening code, and verified that not a single of those 1215 window opening configurations changed its outcome. I will be sleeping well tonight

#niri

hmm

#niri

unusual sights

#niri

@thibaultamartin I thought about this a bit. I notice that TUIs consistently get keyboard nav/UX *way* better than GUIs, even though there's nothing stopping GUIs from matching them. Guess when keyboard is the main/only device, you suddenly focus on it a lot more.

Added scaffolding for layer rules, along with a block-out-from rule. Now you can finally block notifications from screencasts!

Though, layer-shell surfaces don't have a "geometry" so if they have shadows or transparent padding, all of that becomes solid black, since niri has no way to know where the "actual content" of the layer surface is (that's what geometry is for windows).

#niri

Somehow, a small change for tests escalated into trying to completely refactor how animation timing works in niri. And right now I find myself at the exact opposite of this picture. Unfortunately, time has not stopped and is causing problems

Thanks to Christian Meissl's fix in Smithay, the git version of niri correctly shows nested pop-up menus in lxqt-panel. They also submitted a fix for invalid pop-up spawning to ironbar, which makes it work on Smithay compositors.

#niri #lxqt

We hit 4000 stars today on the niri repo!! :ablobcatheartsqueeze:

#niri