Ferese

Ferese is an experimental Wayland tiling compositor written in Rust with Smithay. The nested M0–M3 path is complete, including tiling, workspaces, and timestamp-driven animated geometry. Development now targets the M4 early hardware-session milestone in the window-manager specification.

Development

Install the native dependencies required by Smithay's winit and GLES backends, then run:

cargo run -p ferese

Pass a client and its arguments after -- to launch it inside Ferese:

cargo run -p ferese -- foot

Set RUST_LOG=ferese=debug for detailed compositor logging.

Direct DRM session

Run the hardware backend from a spare TTY, outside another graphical session:

RUST_LOG=ferese=debug cargo run -p ferese -- --backend=drm -- foot

Do not run that command from a terminal inside the active desktop: the direct backend requests control of the seat and primary DRM device. Use Ctrl+Alt+F1–F12 to switch virtual terminals.

M4 validation requires the direct session to:

• start foot and render the same animated tiling workload as the nested path;
• retain keyboard and pointer input;
• pause when switching away and redraw after switching back; and
• log page-flip timing and any missed presentation deadlines on the reference integrated GPU.

The direct path currently targets one connected output. Multi-output hotplug is part of M5.