- Add on-the-fly VSync option modification via D-Bus, as requested by kunitoki (#80). Expose parse_vsync(), create vsync_init() and ensure_glx_context(). - Change default value of ps->drm_fd to -1. - Update Makefile. Change the install/uninstall rules and add doc installation, requested by hasufell in #85. - Mark window not damaged in map_win(). It helps in reducing flickering with inverted window color, but I'm not completely sure if it's safe. - Avoid modifying w->invert_color when window is unmapped. - Update documentation. Thanks to hasufell for pointing out.
4.4 KiB
Compton
Compton is a compositor for X, and a fork of xcompmgr-dana.
I was frustrated by the low amount of standalone lightweight compositors. Compton was forked from Dana Jansens' fork of xcompmgr and refactored. I fixed whatever bug I found, and added features I wanted. Things seem stable, but don't quote me on it. I will most likely be actively working on this until I get the features I want. This is also a learning experience for me. That is, I'm partially doing this out of a desire to learn Xlib.
Changes from xcompmgr:
- inactive window transparency / dimming
- titlebar/frame transparency (specified with
-e
) - menu transparency (thanks to Dana)
- shadows are now enabled for argb windows, e.g. terminals with transparency
- removed serverside shadows (and simple compositing) to clean the code, the only option that remains is clientside shadows
- configuration files (see the man page for more details)
- colored shadows (
--shadow-[red/green/blue]
) - a new fade system
- VSync support (not always working)
- Blur of background of transparent windows, window color inversion (bad in performance)
- Some more options...
Fixes from the original xcompmgr:
- fixed a segfault when opening certain window types
- fixed a memory leak caused by not freeing up shadows (from the freedesktop repo)
- fixed the conflict with chromium and similar windows
- many more
Building
Dependencies:
B for build-time
R for runtime
- libx11 (B,R)
- libxcomposite (B,R)
- libxdamage (B,R)
- libxfixes (B,R)
- libXext (B,R)
- libxrender (B,R)
- libXrandr (B,R)
- pkg-config (B)
- make (B)
- xproto / x11proto (B)
- sh (R)
- xprop,xwininfo / x11-utils (R)
- libpcre (B,R) (Can be disabled with
NO_REGEX_PCRE
at compile time) - libconfig (B,R) (Can be disabled with
NO_LIBCONFIG
at compile time) - libdrm (B) (Can be disabled with
NO_VSYNC_DRM
at compile time) - libGL (B,R) (Can be disabled with
NO_VSYNC_OPENGL
at compile time) - libdbus (B,R) (Can be disabled with
NO_DBUS
at compile time) - asciidoc (B)
How to build
To build, make sure you have the dependencies above:
# Make the main program
$ make
# Make the man pages
$ make docs
# Install
$ make install
(Compton does include a _CMakeLists.txt
in the tree, but we haven't decided whether we should switch to CMake yet. The Makefile
is fully usable right now.)
Known issues
-
VSync does not work too well. It's widely reported that tearing still happens on the top of the screen. I do not know how to fix the issue.
-
If
--unredir-if-possible
is enabled, when compton redirects/unredirects windows, the screen may flicker. Using--paint-on-overlay
minimizes the problem from my observation, yet I do not know if there's a cure. -
compton may not track focus correctly in all situations. The focus tracking code is experimental.
--use-ewmh-active-win
might be helpful. -
Compton may give ugly shadow to windows with ARGB background if
-z
is enabled, because compton cannot determine their real shapes. One may have to disable shadows on those windows with window-type-specific settings in configuration file or--shadow-exclude
. -
The performance of blurring is terrible, probably because of a problem in the X Render implementation. Its behavior is driver-dependent: With nvidia-drivers it works but there are strange 1px lines remaining when you operate on windows (not sure if it's a bug in compton or in the driver); with nouveau it's utterly broken.
Usage
Please refer to the Asciidoc man pages (man/compton.1.asciidoc
& man/compton-trans.1.asciidoc
) for more details and examples.
Note a sample configuration file compton.sample.conf
is included in the repository.
Support
-
Bug reports and feature requests should go to the "Issues" section above.
-
Our (semi?) official IRC channel is #compton on FreeNode.
-
Some information is available on the wiki, including (and presently, only includes) a FAQ.
License
Although compton has kind of taken on a life of its own, it was originally an xcompmgr fork. xcompmgr has gotten around. As far as I can tell, the lineage for this particular tree is something like:
- Keith Packard (original author)
- Matthew Hawn
- ...
- Dana Jansens
- chjj and richardgv
Not counting the tens of people who forked it in between.
Compton is distributed under MIT license, as far as I (richardgv) know. See LICENSE for more info.