NAME

       labwc - a Wayland stacking compositor

SYNOPSIS

       labwc [options...]

DESCRIPTION

       Labwc is a wlroots-based stacking compositor for wayland.

       It is light-weight and independent with a focus on simply stacking windows well and rendering some window
       decorations. Where practicable it uses clients for wall-paper, panels, screenshots and so on.

SIGNALS

       The  compositor will exit or reload its configuration upon receiving SIGTERM and SIGHUP respectively. For
       example:

           kill -s <signal> $LABWC_PID
           killall -s <signal> labwc

       Each running instance of labwc sets the environment variable `LABWC_PID` to its PID. This is  useful  for
       sending signals to a specific instance and is what the `--exit` and `--reconfigure` options use.

OPTIONS

       -c, --config <config-file>
           Specify a config file with path

       -C, --config-dir <config-directory>
           Specify a config directory

       -d, --debug
           Enable full logging, including debug information

       -e, --exit
           Exit the compositor by sending SIGTERM to `$LABWC_PID`

       -h, --help
           Show help message and quit

       -m, --merge-config
           Merge user config/theme files in all XDG Base Directories

       -r, --reconfigure
           Reload the compositor configuration by sending SIGHUP to `$LABWC_PID`

       -s, --startup <command>
           Run command on startup

       -S, --session <command>
           Run  command on startup and terminate compositor on exit. This is useful for session management as it
           allows the session client to terminate labwc by exiting itself. This is a Wayland  specific  use-case
           because  under  X, xinit starts the server and keeps it alive for as long as the session client. Thus
           either the session client  starts  the  Window  Manager,  or  the  Window  Manager  can  be  launched
           independently  first.  On  Wayland,  the Compositor is both Display Server and Window Manager, so the
           described session management mechanisms do not work because the Compositor needs to be running before
           the session can function.  As some session clients support both X11 and Wayland,  this  command  line
           option avoids re-writes and fragmentation.

       -v, --version
           Show the version number and quit

       -V, --verbose
           Enable more verbose logging

SESSION MANAGEMENT

       To enable the use of graphical clients launched via D-Bus or systemd service activation, labwc can update
       both  activation  environments  on  launch.  Provided that labwc is aware of an active D-Bus user session
       (i.e., the environment variable `DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS` is defined), the compositor  will  invoke  the
       commands

           dbus-update-activation-environment
           systemctl --user import-environment

       (when available) to notify D-Bus and systemd with the values of the following environment variables:

           WAYLAND_DISPLAY
           DISPLAY
           XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
           XDG_SESSION_TYPE
           XCURSOR_SIZE
           XCURSOR_THEME
           LABWC_PID

       This  behavior  is  enabled  by default whenever labwc uses the "DRM" wlroots backend (which implies that
       labwc is the primary compositor on the console). When other backends  are  employed  (for  example,  when
       labwc  runs nested in another Wayland compositor or an X11 server), updates to the activation environment
       are disabled by default. Updates to the activation environment can be forced by setting  the  environment
       variable  `LABWC_UPDATE_ACTIVATION_ENV`  to  one  of  the  truthy  values  `1`, `true`, `yes` or `on`; or
       suppressed by setting the variable to one of the falsy values `0`, `false`, `no` or `off`.

       Whenever labwc updates the activation environment on launch, it will also attempt to clear the activation
       environment on exit. For D-Bus, which does not provide a means for properly un-setting variables  in  the
       activation  environment,  this  is  accomplished  by  setting the session variables to empty strings. For
       systemd, the command `systemctl  --user  unset-environment`  will  be  invoked  to  actually  remove  the
       variables from the activation environment.

SEE ALSO

       labwc-actions(5), labwc-config(5), labwc-menu(5), labwc-theme(5)

                                                   2024-07-20                                           labwc(1)