Note: this repository contains the wio source code by Drew DeVault, with some of the patches which were not mainlined, and some changes to make it compile against the latest version of wlroots (currently: 0.18.2).

It is available on the Arch User Repository as wio-wl.

wio

Wio is a Wayland compositor for Linux & FreeBSD which has a similar look & feel to plan9's rio.

This software is incomplete. Notably missing is a Rio-esque FUSE filesystem and Rio's built-in command line (we depend on an external, tty-style terminal emulator).

Installation

To build and install wio:

meson setup build
meson compile -C build

Basic principles

Wio uses wlroots to run a simple Wayland compositor. Right clicking (and holding) outside of a window will bring up the menu. Drag the mouse to the command you'd like to execute and release the mouse.

• New: Opens a new window. Click and hold the mouse, then drag, to define the placement for the new window.
• Resize: Resizes a window. Click the window to resize, then click and drag somewhere else to define the new placement.
• Move: Moves a window. Click and drag a window to move it.
• Delete: Deletes a window. Click the window you want to close.
• Hide: Hides a window. Open the menu again to show the window.

Each window runs cage by default, and instructs cage to run a terminal emulator (alacritty by default). This effectively gives each window its own private Wayland compositor. If you want to run a graphical application, simply run the command from the terminal and cage will display it full-screen within its own window.

To access Wio's own Wayland compositor directly (for example, to take screenshots with grim), set WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 or similar. Note, however, that the only shell for application windows which is supported directly by Wio is xdg-shell.

Usage

Some minor customization options are available by passing command line arguments to Wio:

wio [-c <cage>] [-t <terminal>] [-o <output config>...]

• -c <cage>: specifies the cage command to run new windows in
• -t <term>: specifies the terminal command to run new windows in

For the authentic rio experience, try the alacritty config in contrib/.

Output configuration

Wio supports multihead configurations and HiDPI displays. In order to take advantage of this, you must pass some output configurations on the command line. You can specify the following options, in this order:

• Output name (wayland-info can list output names & modes)
• X & Y coordinates in the multihead layout
• Width & height of the desired mode
• Scale factor
• Transform

Each property should be separated by a colon. Use -1 for X & Y to have Wio automatically place the display, and 0 to have Wio select a mode or scale factor automatically. You may omit any of these properties, but must include any property which comes before the ones you're trying to set.

For example, to specify the X & Y coordinates of output HDMI-A-1, try the following: -o HDMI-A-1:1920:0. If you also want to set its mode to 720p, use -o HDMI-A-1:1920:0:1280:720. If you don't care about setting the mode but want to flip it, use -o HDMI-A-1:-1:-1:0:0:0:flipped.

Available transforms are:

• normal
• 90
• 180
• 270
• flipped
• flipped-90
• flipped-180
• flipped-270

Environment

Wio recognizes the following environment variables for basic keyboard configuration:

• XKB_DEFAULT_RULES
• XKB_DEFAULT_MODEL
• XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT
• XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT
• XKB_DEFAULT_OPTIONS

Read xkeyboard-config(7) for details.