Devlog 1: This was a terrible idea

I’ve wanted to make some kind of graphical shell for awhile now, but I finally decided that this would be the time. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize that this would be incredibly complicated. I’ve spent most of time researching and reading, so this devlog is only for 43 minutes.

I’ve learned a bit about the Wayland protocol, but also how Smithay works. Smithay is a Rust framework for building compositors that I’ll be using for mine. It was used for Niri (my current favorite window manager), so there has to be something good here!

I haven’t written much yet, but I have a plan: I’m going to copy over all the logic from Smithay’s Smallvil example to learn how it works. I’m then going to make some changes, such as pushing to the screen itself instead of a window and maybe some shell UI.

The screenshot is of some of Smallvil’s rendering code next to my notes about it.

I also designed a simple wallpaper, which I set the project image to.