Cagebreak: A Wayland Tiling Compositor Inspired by Ratpoison

This is Cagebreak, a Wayland tiling compositor.

The goal of this project is to provide a successor to ratpoison for Wayland users. However, this is no reimplementation of ratpoison.

Should you like to know if a feature will be implemented, open an issue or get in touch with the development team.

For documentation of Cagebreak, please see

• the man pages
  • cagebreak
  • configuration
• also the FAQ

Cagebreak is based on Cage, a Wayland kiosk compositor.

Cagebreak is developed under Arch Linux and uses the libraries as they are obtained through pacman. However, cagebreak should also work on other distributions given the proper library versions.

Installation

If you are using archlinux, just use the PKGBUILDs from the aur:

• Using cagebreak, Cagebreak is compiled on the target system (since release 1.3.0)
• Using cagebreak-bin, the pre-built binaries are extracted to appropriate paths on the target system (since release 1.3.2)

See cagebreak-pkgbuild for details.

Obtaining Source Code

There are different ways to obtain cagebreak source:

• git clone (for all releases)
• download release asset tarballs (starting at release 1.2.1)

Verifying Source Code

There are corresponding methods of verifying that you obtained the correct code:

• our git history includes signed tags for releases
• release assets starting at release 1.2.1 contain a signature for the tarball

Building Cagebreak

You can build Cagebreak with the meson build system. It requires wayland, wlroots and xkbcommon to be installed. Note that Cagebreak is developed against the latest tag of wlroots, in order not to constantly chase breaking changes as soon as they occur.

Simply execute the following steps to build Cagebreak:

$ meson build
$ ninja -C build

Release Build

By default, this builds a debug build. To build a release build, use meson build --buildtype=release.

Xwayland Support

Cagebreak comes with compile-time support for XWayland. To enable this, first make sure that your version of wlroots is compiled with this option. Then, add -Dxwayland=true to the meson command above. Note that you'll need to have the XWayland binary installed on your system for this to work.

Man Pages

Cagebreak has man pages. To use them, make sure that you have scdoc installed. Then, add -Dman-pages=true to the meson command.

Running Cagebreak

You can start Cagebreak by running ./build/cagebreak. If you run it from within an existing X11 or Wayland session, it will open in a virtual output as a window in your existing session. If you run it in a TTY, it'll run with the KMS+DRM backend. For more configuration options, see the man pages.

Contributing to Cagebreak

Cagebreak is currently developed to fit the needs of its creators. Should you desire to implement a feature, please let us know in advance by opening an issue. However, the feature set is intentionally limited (i.e. we removed support for a desktop background) and will continue to be so in the future.

Nonetheless, don't be intimidated by the (slightly lengthy) release checklist or any other part of this file. Do what you can, open an issue and we will collaborate toward a solution.

Branching Strategy and Versioning

There exists a branch development to which all reasonable code is comitted for final testing.

Once development is ready for a release, it is merged into master (possibly via a cherry-picked branch), creating a new release, which is tagged and signed.

All releases are tagged according to semantic versioning guidelines.

In the past, our git history did not perfectly reflect this scheme.

Releases

The release checklist must be completely fulfilled in one run for a release to occur.

• [ ] git checkout development
• [ ] git pull origin development
• [ ] git push origin development
• [ ] ninja -C build clang-format makes no changes
• [ ] New version number determined according to semantic versioning guidelines
• [ ] Relevant Documentation completed
  • [ ] New features
    • [ ] man pages
      • [ ] man/cagebreak
      • [ ] man/cagebreak-config
      • [ ] Set EPOCH to release day in man generation in meson.build
    • [ ] FAQ.md
    • [ ] Changelog.md for major and minor releases but not patches
  • [ ] Check features for SECURITY.md relevance (changes to socket scope for example)
  • [ ] Fixed bugs documented in Bugs.md
    • [ ] Include issue description from github
• [ ] Testing
  • [ ] Manual testing
  • [ ] Libfuzzer testing
  • [ ] Build version without xwayland support
• [ ] Version Number
  • [ ] meson.build
  • [ ] git tag
  • [ ] man pages
• [ ] meson.build reproducible build versions are current archlinux libraries and gcc
• [ ] Cagebreak is reproducible on multiple machines
• [ ] Documented reproducible build artefacts
  • [ ] Hashes of the artefacts in README.md
  • [ ] Renamed previous signatures
  • [ ] Created gpg signature of the artefacts
    • [ ] gpg --detach-sign -u keyid cagebreak
    • [ ] gpg --detach-sign -u keyid cagebreak.1
    • [ ] gpg --detach-sign -u keyid cagebreak-config.5
• [ ] git add relevant files
• [ ] git commit
• [ ] git push origin development
• [ ] Determined commit and tag message (Start with "Release version_number\n\n")
  • [ ] Mentioned fixed Bugs.md issues ("Fixed Issue n")
  • [ ] Mentioned other important changes
• [ ] git checkout master
• [ ] git merge --squash development
• [ ] git commit and insert message
• [ ] git tag -u keyid version HEAD and insert message
• [ ] git tag -v version and check output
• [ ] git push --tags origin master
• [ ] git checkout development
• [ ] git merge master
• [ ] git push --tags origin development
• [ ] git archive --prefix=cagebreak/ -o release_version.tar.gz tags/version .
• [ ] Create release-artefacts_version.tar.gz
  • [ ] mkdir release-artefacts_version
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak.sig release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak.1 release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak.1.sig release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak-config.5 release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp build/cagebreak-config.5.sig release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp LICENSE release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp README.md release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp SECURITY.md release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] cp FAQ.md release-artefacts_version/
  • [ ] export SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=$(git log -1 --pretty=%ct) ; tar --sort=name --mtime= --owner=0 --group=0 --numeric-owner -czf release-artefacts_version.tar.gz release-artefacts_version
• [ ] Checked archive
  • [ ] tar -xvf release_version.tar.gz
  • [ ] cd cagebreak
  • [ ] meson build --buildtype=release
  • [ ] ninja -C build
  • [ ] gpg --verify ../signatures/cagebreak.sig build/cagebreak
  • [ ] cd ..
  • [ ] rm -rf cagebreak
• [ ] gpg --detach-sign -u keyid release_version.tar.gz
• [ ] gpg --detach-sign -u keyid release-artefacts_version.tar.gz
• [ ] Upload archives and signatures as release assets

Reproducible Builds

Cagebreak offers reproducible builds given the exact library versions specified in meson.build. Should a version mismatch occur, a warning will be emitted. We have decided on this compromise to allow flexibility and security. In general we will adapt the versions to the packages available under Arch Linux at the time of release.

There are reproducibility issues up to and including release 1.2.0. See Issue 5 in Bugs.md.

Reproducible Build Instructions

All hashes and signatures are provided for the following build instructions.

meson build -Dxwayland=true -Dman-pages=true --buildtype=release
ninja -C build

Hashes for Builds

For every release after 1.0.5, hashes will be provided.

For every release after 1.7.0, hashes will be provided for man pages too.

See Hashes.md

GPG Signatures

For every release after 1.0.5, a GPG signature will be provided in signatures.

The current signature is called cagebreak.sig, whereas all older signatures will be named after their release version.

Due to errors in the release process, the releases 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 did not include the release signatures in the appropriate folder of the git repository. However, signatures were provided as release-artefacts at the time of release. The signatures were introduced into the repository with 1.7.3. The integrity of cagebreak is still the same because the signatures were provided as release-artefacts (which were themselves signed) and the hashes in README.md are part of a signed release tag.

Signing Keys

All releases are signed by at least one of the following collection of keys.

• E79F6D9E113529F4B1FFE4D5C4F974D70CEC2C5B
• 4739D329C9187A1C2795C20A02ABFDEC3A40545F
• 7535AB89220A5C15A728B75F74104CC7DCA5D7A8
• 827BC2320D535AEAD0540E6E2E66F65D99761A6F
• A88D7431E5BAAD0B6EAE550AC8D61D8BD4FA3C46
• 8F872885968EB8C589A32E9539ACC012896D450F
• 896B92AF738C974E0065BF42F2576BD366156BB9
• AA927AFD50AF7C6810E69FE8274F2C605359E31B
• BE2DED372287BC4EB2213E13A0C743848A638955
• 0F3476E4B2404F95EC41600683D5810F7911B020

Should we at any point retire a key, we will only replace it with keys signed by at least one of the above collection.

We registered project-repo.co and added mail addresses after release 1.3.0.

We now have a mail address and its key is signed by signing keys. See Security Bugs for details.

The full public keys can be found in keys/ along with any revocation certificates.

GCC and -fanalyzer

Cagebreak should compile with any reasonably new gcc or clang. Consider a gcc version of at least 10.1 if you want to get the benefit of the brand-new -fanalyzer flag. However, this new flag sometimes produces false-postives and we selectively disable warnings for affected code segments as described below.

Meson is configured to set CG_HAS_FANALYZE if -fanalyzer is available. Therefore, to maintain portability, false-positive fanalyzer warnings are to be disabled using the following syntax:

#if CG_HAS_FANALYZE
#pragma GCC diagnostic push
#pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "WARNING OPTION"
#endif

and after

#if CG_HAS_FANALYZE
#pragma GCC diagnostic pop
#endif

Fuzzing

Along with the project source code, a fuzzing framework based on libfuzzer is supplied. This allows for the testing of the parsing code responsible for reading the cagebreak configuration file. When libfuzzer is available (please use the clang compiler to enable it), building the fuzz-testing software can be enabled by passing -Dfuzz=true to meson. This generates a build/fuzz/fuzz-parse binary according to the libfuzzer specifications. Further documentation on how to run this binary can be found here.

Here is an example workflow:

rm -rf build
CC=clang meson build -Dfuzz=true -Db_sanitize=address,undefined -Db_lundef=false
ninja -C build/
mkdir build/fuzz_corpus
cp examples/config build/fuzz_corpus/
WLR_BACKENDS=headless ./build/fuzz/fuzz-parse -jobs=12 -max_len=50000 -close_fd_mask=3 build/fuzz_corpus/

You may want to tweak -jobs or add other options depending on your own setup. We have found code path discovery to increase rapidly when the fuzzer is supplied with an initial config file. We are working on improving our fuzzing coverage to find bugs in other areas of the code.

Caveat

Currently, there are memory leaks which do not seem to stem from our code but rather the code of wl-roots or some other library we depend on. We are working on the problem. In the meantime, add -Db_detect-leaks=0 to the meson command to exclude memory leaks.

Bugs

For any bug, please create an issue on GitHub.

Fixed bugs are to be assigned a number and summarized inside Bugs.md for future reference independent of github, in case this service is unavailable.

Mail contact: cagebreak @ project-repo . co

GPG Fingerprints:

• B15B92642760E11FE002DE168708D42451A94AB5
• F8DD9F8DD12B85A28F5827C4678E34D2E753AA3C
• 3ACEA46CCECD59E4C8222F791CBEB493681E8693

See SECURITY.md for details.

Changelog

See Changelog.md

Contributors

• Aisha Tammy
  • make man pages optional, released in 1.6.0 with slight modifications

License

Please see LICENSE