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  3. Contributing and Debugging

Contributing and Debugging

Contributing guidelines

PR, code styling and code FAQs are here

For issues, please see the guidelines

Build in debug mode

Required packages

xcb stuff, check with your local package provider.

wayland - of course.

Arch:

yay -S gdb ninja gcc cmake libxcb xcb-proto xcb-util xcb-util-keysyms libxfixes libx11 libxcomposite xorg-xinput libxrender pixman wayland-protocols cairo pango seatd

(If any are missing hmu)

Install the VSCode C/C++ and CMake Tools extensions and use that.

I’ve attached a example/launch.json that you can copy to your .vscode/ folder in the repo root.

With that, you can build in debug, go to the debugging tab and hit (gdb) Launch.

Custom, CLI

make debug

attach and profile in your preferred way.

For all ways, make sure to sudo make clear to clear any root-owned files. Also, before the first build (or after some updates, possibly) sudo make config. (If you get any missing header file "...-protocol.h", you need to make config.)
make config will overwrite wlroots headers in /usr/, meaning you’ll be unable to build any other wlroots compositor without a wlroots reinstall.

Running

when running Hyprland in Debug mode, the config is ~/.config/hypr/hyprlandd.conf and the logs can be found at /tmp/hypr/[INSTANCE SIGNATURE]/hyprlandd.conf.

Logs, dumps, etc.

You can use the logs and the GDB debugger, but running Hyprland in debug compile as a driver and using it for a while might give more insight to the more random bugs.

When Hyprland crashes, use coredumpctl and then coredumpctl info PID to see the dump.

I also recommend the amazing command

watch -n 0.1 "cat /tmp/hypr/$(echo HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE)/hyprland.log | grep -v \"arranged\" | tail -n 40"

for live logs. (replace hyprland with hyprlandd for debug builds)

Nesting Hyprland

Hyprland can run nested in a window. For that, make sure you did the following:

  • built in debug
  • removed ALL exec= and exec-once= keywords from your debug config (hyprlandd.conf)
  • set a resolution and are not using preferred
  • made sure no keybinds overlap (I recommend using a different mod for your keybinds altogether)

Once you launch, the display will probably be completely garbled. To fix that, in the parent, do a hyprctl clients and note the size of the window. Make sure while opening the terminal to not resize the nested window. Note that resolution and use it down to the pixel in your hyprlandd.conf.

If you segfault in shadowKeybinds, you probably either are using the same mod as your parent or resized the window.