DWT on Linux with Wayland?

[russel]

The list of dependencies for using DWT on GTK+ appear to imply Xorg as the server. Does DWT work with Wayland?

[jacob-carlborg]

Unfortunately I don't think so. DWT is based on SWT 3.4. I think it needs to be at least 4.7.

[russel]

Debian Sid seems to have packages relating to SWT 3.8.2 and 4.7.3. The documentation implies you have to start a JVM to use SWT, which would seem to make DWT only indirectly a native system – having to start JVM would be a real pain.

[jacob-carlborg]

DWT is a port of SWT, not a binding. The full source code of SWT has been translated from Java to D. No Java or JVM is involved. The thin C/JNI layer has been removed since it's not needed in D. Not other dependencies than system libraries are required.

[russel]

Interesting question then as to which Debian Sid packages to depend on. The naming is not constructive to knowing which are the packages a D application should require.

I will have to give this a try now that it is clear a JVM should never be started.

[jacob-carlborg]

Interesting question then as to which Debian Sid packages to depend on.

The list in the readme [1] is based on Ubuntu. I would guess the packages for Debian would be the same (or very similar). Well, those are the actual libraries to link with, the actual packages are available here [2]

[1] https://github.com/d-widget-toolkit/dwt#usage
[2] https://github.com/d-widget-toolkit/dwt#linux

[russel]

I believe Ubuntu just pulls these packages from Debian unchanged. With so many libx.* and .x11. packages the dependency on X11 is very clear. I guess though it depends on whether they use things that are in Xorg but not in Xwayland. Xwayland supports a lot of the X11 protocol (where Wayland does not) but not all the graphics stuff. Gromit-MPX works on Xorg but fails on Xwayland for example.

I guess Eclipse has to work on Xwayland so perhaps SWT is already ready.

Currently Ubuntu runs GNOME on Xorg by default where Debian and Fedora runs GNOME on Xwayland by default, but you can use Xorg, it's just not the default. Ubuntu will have to switch its default soon I suspect.

I am feeling that getting DWT to SWT 4.7.3 and trying it on Xwayland without all the X11 dependencies is the only way forward.

[jacob-carlborg]

Ah, ok, you're referring to using Wayland. As I mentioned above, as far as I could see SWT added support for Wayland in version 4.7. DWT is based on SWT 3.4 so it's quite far behind.

[jacob-carlborg]

I am feeling that getting DWT to SWT 4.7.3 and trying it on Xwayland without all the X11 dependencies is the only way forward.

Definitely. I’m working on a tool that will automatically translate the Java code to D which should help with this problem.

[jacob-carlborg]

Some work has started to update DWT to a later version of SWT.