News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by dismalaf on Thursday December 25, 2025 @04:24AM (#46383262)
I said build on top of wlroots, not DWL. And I only brought it up as an example of a small Wayland compositor/window manager because the poster I was replying to wants to build their own anyway. DWL is more interesting as a learning exercise than something to use.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by vidarh on Thursday December 25, 2025 @08:17AM (#46384238)
No, I do not. I pointed out that with Wayland I'd be forced to. And DWL is an illustration of how much work that is relative to an X11 wm.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by badsectoracula on Thursday December 25, 2025 @05:19AM (#46383480)
The -IMO- important part of that quote is "NOT HAVE THE TIME OR CAPACITY TO KEEP UP WITH wlroots CHANGES".

X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes.

wlroots seemingly isn't. This is a significant issue when it comes to relying on most 3rd party libraries.

Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by mackeye on Thursday December 25, 2025 @11:04AM (#46385169)
(i worked a _little bit_ on dwl) each wlroots upgrade is a pretty small diff on the dwl source. the annoying part is, as dwl is configured with patches, every patch author has to update their patch to the new 0.x, as dwl is quite minimal, and thus has no stable api. that being said, obviously, dwm doesn't have this problem :)

also, for dwl, the issue is that the initial author (not the guy that wrote that notice) is sorta mia, and he has control of the repo on codeberg, so we'd probably need to fork to be safe, and he may not want to take on project lead. (he checks every patch for merge conflicts with one another and upgrade breakages, god bless him lol)

Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by gf000 on Thursday December 25, 2025 @12:05PM (#46385619)
> X11 is backwards compatible, you do not have to "keep up" with its changes.

That's certainly one way to say "no longer developed".

Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by int_19h on Thursday December 25, 2025 @06:17PM (#46387679)
That was also true back when it was actively developed though. X apps compiled a long time ago still run fine today.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by badsectoracula on Sunday December 28, 2025 @10:21PM (#46417138)
Xorg is still being under development, there is another fork in development too (XLibre) and you're in the comment thread for a project about a brand new X server written from scratch.

Usually things which are "no longer developed" do not have (at least) three implementations in development.

Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by michaelmrose on Monday December 29, 2025 @12:28PM (#46422966)
Mature projects often don't change much or quickly even when actively maintained or improved.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by account42 on Thursday January 08, 2026 @05:19AM (#46539386)
When things work further development is not always a positive.
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by ggdG on Thursday December 25, 2025 @05:37AM (#46383560)
> I said build on top of wlroots, not DWL.

Turns out, the wlroots API is so volatile atm that even the developer of the super small compositor DWL has to throw in the towel for now.

> DWL is more interesting as a learning exercise than something to use.

The same is said about DWM, its xorg counterpart, but I, for one, am a happy user of DWM.

Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by dismalaf on Thursday December 25, 2025 @10:25AM (#46384931)
Nearly every Wayland compositor is built on wlroots. Somehow they manage. But yeah, of course it's going to change more than X11, which is older than I am and more or less abandoned...
Re:Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig by michaelmrose on Monday December 29, 2025 @12:32PM (#46423021)
It's actively maintained by projects like RHEL which still have versions which are supported which in turn support X11.

Others are looking to run X11 wm under wayland with wayback, xlibre wants to keep it moving forward, and phoenix wants to replace it with a modern version.

This isn't what abandoned means.