river

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## Overview

River is a non-monolithic Wayland compositor. Unlike other Wayland compositors,
river does not combine the compositor and window manager into one program.
Instead, users can choose any window manager implementing the
[river-window-management-v1] protocol.

Read my blog post, [Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager](https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-window-management/),
for an in-depth explanation.

There is a [list of compatible window managers] on our [wiki](https://codeberg.org/river/wiki).

> *If you are looking for the old dynamic tiling version of river, see
[river-classic](https://codeberg.org/river/river-classic).*

## Links

- [Protocol Docs](https://isaacfreund.com/docs/wayland/)
- [tinyrwm](https://codeberg.org/river/tinyrwm) example window manager
- [Wiki](https://codeberg.org/river/wiki)
- IRC: [#river](https://web.libera.chat/?channels=#river) on irc.libera.chat ([logs](https://libera.catirclogs.org/river))
- [Zulip](https://river-compositor.zulipchat.com) (new)
- [Issue Tracker](https://codeberg.org/river/river/issues)
- [Code of Conduct](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)

## Features

River defers all window management policy to a separate window manager
implementing the [river-window-management-v1] protocol. This includes window
position/size, pointer/keyboard bindings, focus management, window decorations,
desktop shell graphics, and more.

River itself provides frame perfect rendering, good performance, support for
many Wayland protocol extensions, robust Xwayland support, the ability to
hot-swap window managers, and more.

The [river-window-management-v1] protocol and other river protocol extensions
are stable.  We do not break window managers.

## Motivation

Why split the window manager to a separate process?

- Significantly lower the barrier to entry for writing a Wayland window manager.
- Allow implementing Wayland window managers in high-level garbage collected
  languages without impacting compositor performance and latency.
- Allow hot-swapping between window managers without restarting the compositor
  and all Wayland programs.
- Promote diversity and experimentation in window manager design.

## Building

Note: If you are packaging river for distribution, see [PACKAGING.md](PACKAGING.md).

To compile river first ensure that you have the following dependencies
installed. The "development" versions are required if applicable to your
distribution.

- [zig](https://ziglang.org/download/) 0.17.1
- wayland
- wayland-protocols
- [wlroots](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots) 0.20
- xkbcommon 1.12 or newer
- libevdev
- pixman
- pkg-config
- scdoc (optional, but required for man page generation)

Then run, for example:
```
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe --prefix ~/.local install
```
To enable Xwayland support pas