Troodon Desktop Environment

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!

Troodon is a Compositing X11 window manager. It uses XCB for communication with the X Server and renders its decorations and built-in desktop environment apps and components with OpenGL.

Troodon can be used in both tiling and stacking modes, and the best part is that it is a single binary!

Troodon Philosophy

• Minimize Dependencies

Software Used

• GID
  • https://github.com/zertovitch/gid
  • License: MIT
  • Author: Gautier de Montmollin

Dependencies

These are all pretty normal X11/OpenGL packages/libraries that should be present in most Linux distributions.

• Xorg
• XLib
• XCB
• GL
• GLX
• Freetype
• Fontconfig

FAQ

What's a Troodon?

Troodon was a small dinosaur, regarded as the most intelligent of the dinosaur species and that with the highest visual acuity.

Developer Notes

In debug mode, Troodon produces a binary obj/troodond which is compiled with profiling information baked-in. After a run, this will produce a file gmon.out which can be analyzed with:

gprof --demangle=gnat obj/troodond gmon.out

Generate Ada spec for glext.h with:

g++ -c -fdump-ada-spec -DGL_GLEXT_PROTOTYPES /usr/include/GL/gl.h

To watch for X resource leaks, use:

xrestop

To get info about GLX

glxinfo

To get info about the X Server, supported modes, etc.

xdpyinfo
xdpyinfo -queryExt

Necessary Developer Libs

This will depend on your distribution, Ubuntu uses these package names:

• libfontconfig1-dev
• libfreetype6-dev
• libglx-dev
• libgl-dev
• libgl1-mesa-dev
• libx11-dev
• libx11-xcb-dev
• libxcb-composite0-dev
• libxcb-ewmh-dev
• libxcb-damage0-dev
• libxcb-glx0-dev
• libxcb-randr0-dev
• libxcb-render0-dev
• libxcb-shape0-dev
• libxcb-xfixes0-dev
• libxcb-xinerama0-dev
• libxcb1-dev
• x11proto-dev
• x11proto-core-dev

TODOs

• Stop pinging XServer for window geometry every time we render. Need to keep geometry locally in the scene graph/create a window structure.
• Edit includes to use sane Ada Interface types like Unsigned_8, etc.
• Use Fontconfig to identify fonts, use normal font strings w/ fallbacks.
• sprinkle glGetError all over the place.
• Optimize font rendering with texture atlas
• Make frame close when underlying window closes
• Usable buttons and widgets
• [DONE] Add ability to make whole window transparent (i.e. when dragging, or just for eye candy)
• Add drop shadows/glow to window edges
• Rendering optimization