Add an IPC mechanism

[Drakulix]

IPC clients should able to connect via a local socket of some sort.
Confirmation about access should be granted by the user via UI.

TODO:

• Make sure this cannot be used to DDOS the user. (Probably achievable with a checkbox - something like "Dont show requests from this client anymore")
• Enable setting trusted clients in the configuration / make it possible to autostart them

Protocol will be JSON based.

TODO:

• Search for some good documentation software.
• Define what we want to expose:
  • Different protocols/scopes, all differenciate between reading and writing
  • Output API
    • Get/Set scale
    • Get/Set gamma control
    • Get/Set DPMS
    • Set mirroring (blocked by Output mirroring #10)
    • Pin workspace (blocked by Allow pinning a workspace to a given Output #40)
    • enumerate windows (requires window scope)
    • Get workspace api (requires workspace scope)
  • Workspace API
    • get/switch workspace
    • enumerate windows (requires window scope)
    • get mode api (requires mode scope)
  • Mode API
    • Fullscreen:
      • get status/window (requires window scope)
      • set/unset window (requires window scope to get id)
    • Floating
      • get_windows (requires window scope)
      • get/set_window_position (requires window scope to get id)
      • get/set_window_geometry (requires window scope to get id)
      • get/set_window_stack (requires window scope)
      • maximize (requires window scope)
      • minimize (requires window scope)
    • Combined
      • get/set filters
      • move window (requires window scope to get id)
    • Switch
      • switch mode
    • BSP
      • Get/manipulate tree (this might be difficult to get right)
  • Window/View API
    • all_windows - make sure to provide all information available to configuration filters
    • focus/unfocus
    • close
  • Lockscreen
    • activate/deactivate (Ref Add a lock screen #11)
      - [ ] Statusbar
    • TODO - Maybe support i3bar's protocol?
      - [ ] Config
    • get/set configuration parameters - requires Allow reloading configuration at runtime #39 to be useful
    • reload - blocked by Allow reloading configuration at runtime #39

[kerscher]

Perhaps you could consider using something like D-Bus, with Rust bindings?

Most (all?) of the plumbing is then taken care for you, and for things like notifications, menus and status bars there's already a big ecosystem.

AFAIK it also works on FreeBSD, if that's a concern.

[Timidger]

D-Bus is what Way Cooler uses, and I'd recommend using it in fireplace as well. There are certain tradeoffs that you have to make, but in general I think that a Wayland compositor is a good use case for D-Bus.

The only issue I ran into is that the Rust library is a little over engineered / unrustic.

[Drakulix]

This is absolutely a planned feature, but not until the rewrite to support smithay has happened.

Also yes there is a big ecosystem, but I also will try to provide fireplace with it's own ecosystem, while still being compatible to whats out there. Most existing tools are still build for X11 and I want to build a dock, bar, notification daemon, etc with full on wayland support for modern compositors without any legacy code.

Also once that happens @Timidger I am also very interested in supporting WayCooler with my tools. Even if we still want to build our own compositors and both of us have a different vision, I think the ecosystem can greatly benefit from having just more options.

[Timidger]

@Drakulix sounds good to me. Anything I build I want to be compatible with other compositors as well. Currently that isn't the case, but in the future I hope users can choose whatever applications they want to use for notifications, bars, etc regardless of the compositor used.

[voxadam]

9P is another option.