srdwm

A cross-platform window manager configured in Lua.

srdwm running a Wayland session

Every backend draws a real title bar, and every title bar supports drag, resize, minimize, maximize and close. No backend falls back to a plain border.

Features

Tiling, dynamic, floating, centred and manual layouts, switchable at runtime
Server-side decorations with working buttons on every backend
Lua configuration with hot reload on write
Multi-monitor, with per-monitor layout and workspace assignment
Window rules matched on class, title and role
Session lock, desktop icons with context menus, and a global menu over com.canonical.AppMenu.Registrar
Layer-shell and XWayland on Wayland
Optional GPU rendering path (GBM and EGL) alongside the software one
Headless outputs for testing without hardware

Status

Backend	State
Wayland	Complete and used daily. Decorations, session lock, desktop icons, global menu, layer-shell, XWayland, optional GPU rendering, headless outputs, and a virtual pointer that can be pinned to one window.
X11	Working. Reparenting window manager with a drawn title bar, buttons, drag, resize and a right-click window menu. Feature-matched against the Wayland backend.
Windows	Under development. Border tinting through `DwmSetWindowAttribute`, low-level input hooks and monitor enumeration are written and `cfg(windows)`-gated, but are not yet built or run on Windows.
macOS	Under development. Window control through the Accessibility API is written and `cfg(target_os = "macos")`-gated, but is not yet built or run on macOS.

docs/IMPLEMENTATION_STATUS.md breaks down what is complete per backend, docs/TODO.md tracks what is pending, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md covers the crate layout, and docs/FEATURE_GAP.md compares srdwm against other compositors and desktop environments.

Building

cargo build --workspace
cargo test --workspace

Linux needs the X11, Wayland, EGL, GLES, xkbcommon, libinput and libseat development headers, which x11rb and smithay link against. On Arch:

sudo pacman -S libx11 libxcb wayland wayland-protocols egl-wayland \
    mesa xkbcommon libinput libseat pixman pam clang

On Debian and Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libx11-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-randr0-dev \
    libxcb-keysyms1-dev libwayland-dev wayland-protocols \
    libxkbcommon-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libinput-dev \
    libudev-dev libgbm-dev libdrm-dev libseat-dev libpixman-1-dev \
    libpam0g-dev libclang-dev

Lua is built from source through mlua's vendored feature, so no system Lua package is needed.

Running

cargo run -p srdwm

The backend is chosen automatically: Wayland when WAYLAND_DISPLAY or XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland is set, X11 otherwise. Unset those variables to force X11.

To try it without disturbing your session, run it nested:

Xephyr :99 -screen 1280x800 &
DISPLAY=:99 SRDWM_CONFIG_PATH="$PWD/config/srd" cargo run -p srdwm

Configuration

srdwm reads $SRDWM_CONFIG_PATH, then $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/srd, then ~/.config/srd. config/srd/ is a complete working example: init.lua loads keybindings.lua, layouts.lua, themes.lua, monitors.lua, rules.lua and startup.lua.

local srd = require("srd")

srd.bind("Mod4+Return", function() srd.spawn("alacritty") end)
srd.bind("Mod4+q", function() srd.window.close() end)
srd.bind("Mod4+h", function() srd.window.focus("left") end)

srd.layout.set("tiling")
srd.layout.configure("tiling", { master_ratio = 0.6, gaps = { inner = 8, outer = 16 } })

srd.theme.set_colors({ background = "#2e3440", accent = "#88c0d0" })

Every option and its default is listed in docs/DEFAULTS.md.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.