Anvil
August 10, 2025 ยท View on GitHub
A compositor used as a testing ground for new smithay features. For a simple example compositor consider reading smallvil
Dependencies
You'll need to install the following dependencies (note, that those package names may vary depending on your OS and linux distribution):
libwaylandlibxkbcommon
These are needed for the "Udev/DRM backend"
libudevlibinputlibgbmlibseat
If you want to enable X11 support (to run X11 applications within anvil),
then you'll need to install the following packages as well:
- xwayland
Build and run
You can run it with cargo after having cloned this repository:
cd anvil;
cargo run -- --{backend}
The currently available backends are:
--x11: start anvil as an X11 client. This allows you to run the compositor inside an X11 session or any compositor supporting XWayland. Should be preferred over the winit backend where possible.--winit: start anvil as a Winit application. This allows you to run it inside of an other X11 or Wayland session.--tty-udev: start anvil in a tty with udev support. This is the "traditional" launch of a Wayland compositor. Note that this requires you to start anvil as root if your system does not have logind available.
Supported Environment Variables
| Variable | Example | Backends |
|---|---|---|
| ANVIL_DRM_DEVICE | /dev/dri/card0 | tty-udev |
| ANVIL_DISABLE_10BIT | any | tty-udev |
| ANVIL_DISABLE_DIRECT_SCANOUT | any | tty-udev |
| ANVIL_GLES_DISABLE_INSTANCING | any | tty-udev |
| ANVIL_NO_VULKAN | 1,true,yes,y | x11 |
| SMITHAY_USE_LEGACY | 1,true,yes,y | tty-udev |
| SMITHAY_VK_VERSION | 1.3 |