Better wayland support

[ksandom]

Background

Currently, wayland support is achieved via VNC, which is not a good user-experience (slow, laggy, and requires manual configuration by the user). This ticket is for getting native wayland support out of the box.

• handWavey's Wayland documentation.

Success

• General
  • [ ] handWavey works in wayland without needing something like VNC/RDP/Synergy etc.
• If configuration is needed for the user to enable it:
  • [ ] Make it as easy as possible to get it going.
  • [ ] Document what configuration is needed.
• Testing: All of the following should still work out of the box:
  • [ ] Windows.
  • [ ] X
  • [ ] MacOS.
• Follow-up
  • [ ] Create a ticket for auto-detecting wayland so that the correct control mechanism can be used.

Necessary functionality of the solution

• Mouse
  • Set mouse location.
  • Set button down.
  • Set button up.
  • Scroll +/-.
• Keyboard
  • Set key down.
  • Set key up.

Possible leads

libei

libei looks like the most promising possibility so far.

SWT

This comment suggests SWT:

SWT already supports Wayland as it uses GDK/GTK.

• Possible implementation? - Doesn't look like it, but maybe.
• org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.setCursorLocation(...) - Sounds promising.
  • setCursorLocation.
  • Display documentation.
    • setCursorLocation().

Project Wakefield

Project Wakefield is the recently established OpenJDK initiative to implement native Wayland support within Java.

• Project Wakefield.
• Post announcing it.

OpenJDK developers have acknowledged this will "take years to fully complete and deliver" their native Wayland support.

I don't know how long it will be until keyboard and mouse control will arrive.

uinput

• Stackoverflow post.

OpenJDK 19

As at 2022-03-18; OpenJDK 19 is not able to control the mouse and keyboard via AWT in Walyand.

General discussion

• From a gnome user's perspective.