This is a patched Xserver with a KDrive backend that uses the arcan-shmif to map Xlib/Xcb/X clients to a running arcan instance.
It currently works as a 'desktop in a window', where you supply the window manager and so on, and use the X side as normal. Some arcan features will be lost, particularly any customizations done to the keybindings - normal X controls for defining keyboard maps and overrides are needed.
meson build
cd build ; ninja .
Since most installations tend to have an Xorg already present, and you don't want to mess with those far too much, the main binary output of interest on a system with Xorg is simply the Xarcan binary.
From a terminal with access to connection primitives (env: ARCAN_CONNPATH), just run:
Xarcan
Then you want to attach a window manager, e.g.
DISPLAY=:0 i3 &
DISPLAY=:0 xterm
For multiple instances, you can add :1 (and set DISPLAY=:1 etc. accordingly).
To force the window size and disable resizing behavior, use
There is also the option to forego Xarcan entirely, and use arcan-wayland from the arcan source repository:
arcan-wayland -xwl -exec xterm
Here is a list of planned changes for which contributions would be gladly accepted:
- Fix GLX-/DRI3- bindings
Some refactoring upstream broke the way we dealt with accelerated handle passing and accelerated clients. Most of this can probably be translated from the hw/xwayland parts about gbm/glamor/glx.
- Swap out Epoxy resolver
Xorg uses epoxy to resolve its GL symbols. For the advanced Arcan parts with swapping GPUs/resetting clients, we want to (re-)query the symbols on a device change.
- Intercept pixmap read calls
Similar to XAce, block attempts at reading screen contents by default, then swap in any ENCODE- pushed segments to let the arcan instance drive what screen recording tools etc. see.
- "Native" mouse cursor
Right now, the mouse cursor is rastered into the buffer. The code should try to allocate a custom mouse cursor and synchronize that separately.
- Aclip integration
Request a clipboard via the existing shmif connection, handover-exec it to aclip with the X display etc. inherited.
- Keyboard translation
This should also apply to arcan-wayland, but basically a keymap translator as a pre-step should be viable, see e.g. github.com/39aldo39/klfc.