chamferwm

A tiling window manager with Vulkan based compositor. Documentation

Prerequisites

• XCB libraries
• Vulkan SDK
• glm
• Python 3.6+ and boost modules
• python-xlib
• shaderc Shader compiler
• FreeType2
• HarfBuzz
• fontconfig

Features

Window manager:

• Dynamic horizontal and vertical tiling with gaps and stacking
• Specify container size restrictions, overlap when necessary
• Resize and translate individual containers in their place while keeping the surrounding layout
• Floating containers and automatic dialog, dock, widget etc. handling
• Multiple named workspaces
• Yank and paste containers to move them within the tree hierarchy along with typical move operations
• Configuration with python, scriptable behaviour with client and container specific callbacks
• Fully keyboard controllable

Compositor:

• Vulkan renderer
• Arbitrary window decorations and borders with user supplied shaders
• Per-client materials
• Automatically disable for fullscreen applications
• Optional, alternatively use any other external compositor

Installing

Currently a PKGBUILD is available for testing purposes. Install from AUR, or run meson to build manually. The package from AUR will install a default configuration and the precompiled shaders to /usr/share/chamfer/. Copy the configuration to another location to make modifications. Once ready, put the following line to your .xinitrc:

exec chamfer --config=/usr/share/chamfer/config/config.py --shader-path=/usr/share/chamfer/shaders/

Adding --experimental to the line above can result in considerable performance improvements, but may not yet work properly on all drivers. When multiple rendering devices are available, make the choice with --device-index=n, where n is the zero-based index of the device (default = 0). Launch Xorg with startx.

• To automatically let fullscreen applications bypass the compositor, use --unredir-on-fullscreen.
• NVIDIA users may have to add Option "AllowSHMPixmaps" "1" to their Xorg configuration.
• For compositor compatibility mode if encountering any issues, use --no-host-memory-import and --no-scissoring.

To run the WM without the integrated compositor, use

exec chamfer --config=/usr/share/chamfer/config/config.py -n

In this case, any other external compositor may be used.