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Getting and Using MirAL {#getting_and_using_miral}

Getting MirAL

Depending upon your needs you can:

  1. Install and use the MirAL examples [Using MirAL examples];
  2. Use MirAL to develop your own Mir server [Using MirAL for development]; or,
  3. Build MirAL yourself [Building MirAL].

Using MirAL examples

You can install the MirAL examples as follows:

$ sudo apt install libmiral-examples
$ sudo apt install mir-graphics-drivers-desktop qtubuntu-desktop

For convenient testing there's a "miral-app" script that wraps the commands used in the last section to start the server and then launches the gnome-terminal (as the current user):

$ miral-app

To run independently of X11 you need to grant access to the graphics hardware (by running as root) and specify a VT to run in. There's a "miral-desktop" script that wraps to start the server (as root) and then launch gnome-terminal (as the current user):

$ miral-desktop

For more options see [Options when running the MirAL example shell] below.

Running applications on MirAL

If you use the command-line launched by miral-app or miral-desktop native Mir applications (which include native Mir clients and those that use SDL or the GTK+, Qt toolkits) can be started as usual:

$ sudo apt install mir-demos kate neverball 
$ mir_demo_client_egltriangle
$ gedit
$ kate
$ neverball

From outside the MirAL session GTK+, Qt and SDL applications can still be run using the miral-run script:

$ miral-run gedit
$ miral-run 7kaa

Running for X11 applications

If you want to run X11 applications that do not have native Mir support in the toolkit they use then the answer is Xmir: an X11 server that runs on Mir. First you need Xmir installed:

$ sudo apt install xmir

Then once you have started a miral shell (as above) you can use miral-xrun to run applications under Xmir:

$ miral-xrun firefox

This automatically starts a Xmir X11 server on a new $DISPLAY for the application to use. You can use miral-xrun both from a command-line outside the miral-shell or, for example, from the terminal running in the shell.

Options when running the MirAL example shell

Script Options

Both the "miral-app" and "miral-desktop" scripts provide options for using an alternative example shell (miral-kiosk) and an alternative to gnome-terminal.

-kiosk               use miral-kiosk instead of miral-shell
-launcher <launcher> use <launcher> instead of 
                     'gnome-terminal --app-id com.canonical.miral.Terminal'

In addition miral-desktop has the option to set the VT that is used:

-vt       <termid>   set the virtual terminal [4]

There are some additional options (listed with "-h") but those are the important ones.

MirAL Options

The scripts can also be used to pass options to MirAL: they pass everything on the command-line following the first thing they don't understand. These can be listed by miral-shell --help. Most of these options are inherited from Mir, but the following MirAL specific are likely to be of interest:

--window-management-trace           log trace message

Probably the main use for MirAL is to test window-management (either of a toolkit or of a server) and this logs all calls to and from the window management policy. This option is supported directly in the MirAL library and works for any MirAL based shell - even one you write yourself.

--keymap arg (=us)                  keymap <layout>[+<variant>[+<options>]]
                                    , e,g, "gb" or "cz+qwerty" or 
                                    "de++compose:caps"

For those of us not in the USA this is very useful. Both the -shell and -kiosk examples support this option.

--window-manager arg (=titlebar)   window management strategy 
                                   [{titlebar|tiling|system-compositor}]

Is only supported by miral-shell and its main use is to allow an alternative "tiling" window manager to be selected.

Using MirAL for development

Install the headers and libraries for using libmiral in development:

$ sudo apt install libmiral-dev

A miral.pc file is provided for use with pkg-config or other tools. For example: pkg-config --cflags miral

The MirAL documentation can be installed and read like this:

$ sudo apt install miral-doc
$ xdg-open /usr/share/doc/miral-doc/html/index.html

Building MirAL

These instructions assume that you’re using Ubuntu 16.04LTS or later, I’ve not earlier Ubuntu versions or other distributions.

You’ll need a few development and utility packages installed, along with the Mir graphics drivers:

$ sudo apt install devscripts equivs bzr
$ sudo apt install mir-graphics-drivers-desktop

(If you’re working on a phone or tablet use mir-graphics-drivers-android in place of mir-graphics-drivers-desktop.)

With these installed you can checkout and build miral:

$ bzr branch lp:miral
$ sudo mk-build-deps -i
$ mkdir miral/build
$ cd  miral/build
$ cmake ..
$ make

This creates libmiral.so in the lib directory and an example shell (miral-shell) in the bin directory. This can be run directly:

$ bin/miral-shell

With the default options this runs in a window on X (which is convenient for development).

The miral-shell example is simple, don’t expect to see a sophisticated launcher by default. You can start mir apps from the command-line. For example:

$ bin/miral-run gnome-terminal

That’s right, a lot of standard GTK+ applications will “just work” (the GDK toolkit has a Mir backend). Any that assume the existence of an X11 and bypass the toolkit my making X11 protocol calls will have problems though.

To exit from miral-shell press Ctrl-Alt-BkSp.

You can install the MirAL examples, headers and libraries you've built with:

$ sudo make install

Otherwise, you just need to add "bin/" to the beginning of the commands shown in the previous section.