v7.2

• Fixes:
  • Stopped compton from sometimes freezing the X server when dbus is
    enabled.
  • Fixed the example dbus scripts.

v7.1

Fixes

• #209
• Fixed assertion failures, bugs, and memory leaks in experimental
  backends

v7

Release schedule

rc1 released on Jul 07, 2019
Final version released on Jul 18, 2019

Build changes

• compton now requires uthash to build.
• xcb-xinerama is now mandatory.
• Improved build experience on FreeBSD.

Notable changes

• compton now detects what driver it is using.

• glFinish is used automatically when not using NVIDIA driver. This should reduce input lag.

• Window shadow parameter is tweaked so it won't get cut off at the edges.

• The experimental glx backend now uses OpenGL 3.3 core profile.

• New blur configuration syntax. See here for details

  This is mainly a preparation for the kawase blur method. But if you are using the experimental backends, you can now get better gaussian blur without the need to generate blur kernels manually.

  Comparison:

  Before	After

  (Blur configuration used:

  blur: {
    method: "gaussian";
    size: 5;
    deviation: 3;
  }
  

  )

Changes

• Introduced the debug-mode. compton won't take over your screen when it's in debug mode, so you can, for example, use your debugger when compton is suspended.
• Improved transparency detection to avoid some of the necessary blur rendering #191
• Refactored how window creation is handled in compton. Should reduce possible races with X server.
• New (experimental) backends are now have feature parity.
• compton is no longer advertised to X server as xcompmgr.
• X atoms are now cached.
• More unused code removal.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed several crashes related to unredirecting.
• Fixed several rendering errors in the new glx and xrender backends.
• Fixed several rendering errors related to window reparenting.
• Fixed #50, but only under the experimental backends.
• Fixed regressions: #160 #164 #175 #176 #188 #189 #190
• Other fixes: #171

v6.2

Fixes some very visible bugs.

(v6.1 is retracted)

Fixes since v6

• Fix an assertion failure in map_win() (happens when using debug build of compton with i3-gaps) #143
• Fix a problem where the content of a closed window is left on the screen. #140 #82 (comment)
• Fix a problem where the content of a closed window is flashing on the screen when --use-damage is used. #82 (comment)

v6

Release schedule

• rc1 released: Mar 10, 2019
• Final release: Mar 23, 2019

Notable changes since v5.1

• Experimental new backends are integrated into compton, use --experimental-backends to enabled them. They are pre-alpha quality right now, and can simply just not work at all. It might even crash your X server (known to happen with Intel driver). You have been warned.
• vsync is now a boolean value, indicates whether vsync should be enabled. #130

Dependency and build changes

• xcb-xinerama is mandatory now. Build option xinerama is removed.

Other changes

• New glx backend is feature complete.
• New xrender backend is feature complete.
• Better handling of X visuals and GLX FBConfigs #104 cf9125c
• Failure to parse config file is now a hard error.
• Fading, window state tracking is refactored.

Deprecations

• --sw-opti is deprecated. Users who want to limit the paint rate should always just use --vsync.
• --glx-use-gpushader4 is deprecated, see 710ff2f
• --vsync-aggressive is deprecated, see e7de442
• Support for Composite < 0.2 dropped. d0fd21e
• New glx backend won't support OpenGL < 3.0
• --glx-swap-method is deprecated in favor of the easier to understand option --use-damage #131

Removed option

• --glx-copy-from-front and --glx-use-copysubbuffermesa are removed since they are deprecated 3 major releases ago.

v5.1

Fixes since v5

• #92 #98
• Config file search order makes more sense now. Make sure user config files are always preferred over system ones. c11c24b
• Fixed handling of -h. 9d64dec

Fixes since v5.1-rc1

• Fixed parsing of blur matrix when using locale with "," as decimal point. Thanks @x70b1 for pointing out. 465a968

v5

Release schedule

• -rc1: Released Dec 23, 2018
• Final release: Released Jan 20, 2019

Notable changes since v4

• Makefile has been removed.
• Shadow calculation is a bit different now. There shouldn't be much actual visual difference, but you would need to increase your shadow radius by about 50% to keep what you have now. (dffde06)
• wintypes options actually overrides the global options now. Previously, setting shadow = false for a wintype when the global shadow option is true has no effect. Now that actually disables shadow for that specific wintype. (f97cf48)
• New config file path: ~/.config/compton/compton.conf (#62)
• compton now relies on libxdg-basedir for finding config files. (94b1bc0)
• Better logging (#67).

Other changes since v4

• Added a wintype option, redir-ignore. It prevents certain type of windows from triggering a screen redirection when the screen is currently unredirected (#60).
• Added a wintype option, full-shadow. Enabling it causing shadows to be drawn on parts of the screen that are normally being obscured by the body of the windows. Usefully when certain windows have completely transparent parts that are not correctly reported via XShape (#46).
• Using vsync = opengl-swc with xrender backend now causes a hard failure instead of just a warning.
• Swap interval is now explicitly set to 0 when vsync = none is used with the glx backend. Thanks, @Streetwalrus! (e2182bb)

Invisible changes

• New backend code! But you can't use it yet.

New options

• log-level. Control what information will be logged to terminal. Possible values are "trace", "debug", "info", "warn", "error".
• log-file. Set the file logs will be written to.

Deprecated/Removed options

• alpha-step. compton now always uses 256 alpha steps.
• vsync = opengl-mswc. opengl-swc will now try both extensions, and use the one that's available.
• -d. Please use the DISPLAY environment variable.
• -S. A not very useful debugging option.
• no-name-pixmap. A not very useful and undocumented debugging option.
• xrender-sync. Use xrender-sync-fence instead.

Fixes since v4

#56 #59

Fixes since v5-rc1

#79

Changes since v5-rc2

• Minor fixes.

Changes since v5-rc3

• Minor fixes.
• Logging to apitrace.

v4

Notes

v4 is mostly be a bug fix release.

Changes since v3

Fixes

Fixed #28 #29 #30 #31 #35 #40 #33 #34 #47

Fixed the xr_glx_hybrid backend.

Removed flags

• --dbe: Does not work reliably to avoid tearing. As noted in the manpage, and confirmed by my tests
• --xrender-sync and --xrender-sync-fence: See commit 50e2259 See commit b18d46b
• --paint-on-overlay: compton will always paint on overlay when that is possible

v3

Notes

This is the development branch, so bugs are to be expected.

Build system

compton is moving to the meson build system. Users (and packagers) are encouraged to try it and report any problems they found.

Notable changes since v2

• Some refactoring
• Moved event handling from xlib to xcb.
• Moved most of the X functions (XShape, XComposite, Xrender, Xinerama, etc.) to xcb. Huge thanks to @psychon 🎉
• Moved from server side region (Xfixes) to client side (pixman).
• Painting logic clean up.
• Use libev for I/O and timeout events.
• Move to meson build system

Fixes since rc1

#19 #20

Deprecation

• --glx-use-copysubbuffermesa: On of the Intel developers has called this extension "a bad idea", saying it could hurt bandwidth constrained Intel cards. And generally buffer swapping is just going to be faster as long as you have a sane video driver.
• --glx-copy-from-front: The developer who added this flag in the first place has said "do not use [this flag]" chjj/compton#168 (comment)

v2

Changes

• Fix occasional screen freeze (chjj/compton#494)