swm

A minimal, floating-only Wayland compositor — a port of sowm (Simple/Shitty Opinionated Window Manager) to wlroots.

It keeps sowm's philosophy: no tiling, no tabs, no panels — just windows you move and resize yourself, with focus-follows-cursor and a handful of keybindings. Everything is configured through a single text file in your XDG config directory (no recompiling needed).

Features

• Floating-only layout (no tiling, no workspaces-from-tiling)
• 6 virtual workspaces
• Focus-follows-cursor
• MOD + left-drag to move, MOD + right-drag to resize
• Fullscreen toggle (with an optional top gap for a status bar)
• Center / kill / alt-tab window cycling
• Key-launched programs
• Background wallpaper image (PNG, JPEG, etc.) — point to a file or a directory (a random image is chosen each session)
• Fully runtime-editable configuration via XDG

Dependencies

• A C compiler and pkg-config
• wlroots (the Makefile is pinned to the wlroots-0.20 pkg-config name)
• wayland-server
• xkbcommon
• A seat/session provider — libseat (with seatd) or logind

On a Debian/Ubuntu-like system:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config \
  libwlroots-dev wayland-protocols libxkbcommon-dev libseat-dev

If your wlroots installs under a different pkg-config name (e.g. wlroots), edit PKGS in the Makefile.

Build & install

make            # builds ./build/swm
make install        # installs to ~/.local/bin/swm (PREFIX overridable; no root needed)

Other targets: make clean, make run (build and execute).

Running

swm needs a Wayland session/seat. The easiest ways to try it:

• Nested (from inside an existing Wayland session):

  ./build/swm

  It will open as a Wayland client window you can poke at.

• From a TTY: make sure XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set and a seat manager is running (seatd or a logind session), then launch swm from a console/display manager. This takes over the display.

swm prints the socket it listens on, e.g. swm: running on WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1. Point clients at it with WAYLAND_DISPLAY.

Configuration

Configuration lives at:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/swm/swm.conf      (falls back to ~/.config/swm/swm.conf)

On first run, swm creates this file with sensible defaults, so you always have a template to edit. Changes take effect after restarting swm (there is no live reload).

The file is organized into sections:

[settings]
mod = SUPER
border_width = 1
gap = 0
border_normal = #333333
border_select = #c831dc

[bindings]
<MODS>+<KEY> = <action> [args]

# starts a comment.

Settings

Setting	Meaning	Default
mod	Primary modifier, used by the MOD alias in bindings	SUPER
border_width	Focus border thickness in pixels (0 = borderless)	1
gap	Pixels reserved at the top (e.g. for a bar); fullscreen	0
	windows shrink by this amount so the bar stays visible
border_normal	Border color of unfocused windows (hex)	#333333
border_select	Border color of the focused window (hex)	#880000
wallpaper	Path to a background image, or a directory (random pick)	(none)

Keybindings

Binding syntax:

<MODS>+<KEY> = <action> [args]

• Modifiers (joined with +): SUPER/LOGO, ALT/MOD1, SHIFT, CTRL/CONTROL, MOD2/MOD3/MOD5, and MOD (the mod = alias above).
• Keys use xkbcommon names and are case-insensitive: q, Return, Tab, 1–6, XF86AudioRaiseVolume, etc. Bindings are matched on the base (unshifted) key, so SUPER+SHIFT+1 works even though Shift makes the key produce !.

Actions

Action	Args	Description
kill	—	Close the focused window
center	—	Center the focused window on its output
fullscreen	—	Toggle fullscreen
next / prev	—	Cycle focus forward / backward (alt-tab)
workspace <n>	1–6	Switch to workspace n
send <n>	1–6	Move focused window to workspace n
exec <cmd...>	command	Launch a program (whitespace-separated, "quotes" allowed)

Example

[settings]

mod = SUPER
border_width = 2
gap = 0
border_normal = #333333
border_select = #880000

[bindings]

SUPER+q        = kill
SUPER+c        = center
SUPER+f        = fullscreen
ALT+Tab        = next
ALT+SHIFT+Tab  = prev

SUPER+d        = exec srun
SUPER+Return   = exec st
SUPER+SHIFT+1  = send 1

XF86AudioRaiseVolume = exec amixer sset Master 5%+

Default keybindings

Binding	Action
Super+q	Kill focused window
Super+c	Center window
Super+f	Toggle fullscreen
Alt+Tab	Next window
Alt+Shift+Tab	Previous window
Super+d	exec srun (the launcher in ../srun)
Super+w	exec bud ~/Wallpapers
Super+p	exec scr
Super+Return	exec st
XF86Audio*	Volume up/down/mute (amixer)
XF86MonBrightness*	Brightness up/down (bri)
Super+1…Super+6	Switch to workspace 1–6
Super+Shift+1…6	Send focused window to ws 1–6

Super here means the MOD key (Logo / Windows key by default).

Mouse controls

• Move the pointer over a window to focus it.
• MOD + left button drag — move the window.
• MOD + right button drag — resize the window.

Project layout

src/swm.h     Shared types, globals, and function prototypes
src/config.c  Runtime config loader/parser (XDG config file)
src/client.c  Client lifecycle, focus, window ops, workspaces, xdg toplevel
src/input.c   Keyboard and pointer/cursor handling
src/output.c  Output lifecycle and frame commits
src/main.c    Globals, helpers, and compositor setup/teardown
Makefile      gcc + pkg-config build

Notes

• This is a port of sowm's logic to wlroots; credit for the design goes to the sowm authors. swm targets wlroots 0.20 and uses unstable wlroots APIs (-DWLR_USE_UNSTABLE).
• Only XDG-shell toplevel clients are supported (no X11/XWayland, no layer-shell panels — use the gap setting if you want to leave room for an external bar).