Noctalia

A lightweight Wayland shell and bar with no Qt or GTK dependency.

Design Principles

• Direct Wayland + OpenGL ES only -- no toolkit overhead
• Minimal scene graph, domain-specific to shell UI
• Packaging should work across all major Linux distros: Arch, NixOS, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Void, OpenSuse

Stack

Layer	Library
Wayland core	libwayland-client, wayland-scanner, wayland-protocols
Surfaces	zwlr-layer-shell-v1
Multi-monitor	zxdg-output-unstable-v1
Active window metadata	zwlr-foreign-toplevel-management-unstable-v1
Lockscreen	ext-session-lock-v1
Cursor	wp-cursor-shape-v1
Rendering	EGL, OpenGL ES 3, wayland-egl
Text	freetype, harfbuzz, msdfgen (vendored), fontconfig
Images	stb_image (vendored), nanosvg (vendored)
IPC	sdbus-c++
Audio	libpipewire
Config	tomlplusplus (vendored)

Dependencies

Fedora

sudo dnf install cmake gcc-c++ just \
  wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel \
  libEGL-devel mesa-libGLES-devel \
  freetype-devel harfbuzz-devel fontconfig-devel \
  sdbus-cpp-devel \
  libasan libubsan

Arch

sudo pacman -S cmake gcc just \
  wayland wayland-protocols \
  libglvnd freetype2 harfbuzz fontconfig \
  sdbus-cpp \
  gcc-libs

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install cmake g++ just \
  libwayland-dev wayland-protocols \
  libegl-dev libgles-dev \
  libfreetype-dev libharfbuzz-dev libfontconfig-dev \
  libsdbus-c++-dev \
  libasan8 libubsan1

Vendored (no system package needed): msdfgen, stb, nanosvg, tomlplusplus.

Build

Requires just.

git submodule update --init --recursive

# Debug (default)
just configure
just build

# Optimized release (-O3, LTO, native)
just configure release
just build release

# Clean rebuild
just rebuild          # debug
just rebuild release  # release

# Run debug
just run

# Run release
just run release

Manual CMake

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug   # or Release
cmake --build build --parallel
./build/noctalia

Code Style

This project uses clang-format for formatting. Run just format before committing.

Naming Conventions

	Convention	Example
Files	snake_case	widget_factory.cpp
Directories	snake_case	shell/widgets/
Types / Classes	PascalCase	WidgetFactory
Functions / Methods	camelCase	createWidget()
Variables / Parameters	camelCase	busName
Private members	m_camelCase	m_changeCallback
Macros / Enum values	SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE	MAX_SIZE

Project Layout

src/
  app/           Application bootstrap, main loop
  config/        Configuration and state persistence (TOML)
  core/          Logger, shared utilities
  dbus/          DBus service implementations
  debug/         Debug service (runtime log toggling)
  font/          Font discovery (fontconfig)
  notification/  Notification manager
  render/        EGL/OpenGL renderer, shader programs, MSDF text
  shell/
    bar/         Bar surface and instance
    notification/ Notification popup
    panel/       Panel base and manager
    panels/      Panel implementations
    wallpaper/   Wallpaper surface and instance
    widget/      Widget base and factory
    widgets/     Widget implementations
  system/        System monitor (CPU, RAM, temperature)
  time/          Time service and polling
  ui/
    controls/    Low-level UI building blocks
    icons/       Icon registry
  wayland/       Wayland connection, layer-shell surfaces
third_party/
  msdfgen/       MSDF glyph generation (git submodule)
  tomlplusplus/  TOML parser (vendored)
  stb/           Image loading (vendored)
  nanosvg/       SVG rasterization (vendored)

Debugging

All debug commands use the dev.noctalia.Debug D-Bus service, available at runtime.

# Enable verbose debug logs
gdbus call --session --dest dev.noctalia.Debug --object-path /dev/noctalia/Debug --method dev.noctalia.Debug.SetVerboseLogs true

# Disable verbose debug logs
gdbus call --session --dest dev.noctalia.Debug --object-path /dev/noctalia/Debug --method dev.noctalia.Debug.SetVerboseLogs false

# Check current verbose log state
gdbus call --session --dest dev.noctalia.Debug --object-path /dev/noctalia/Debug --method dev.noctalia.Debug.GetVerboseLogs

# Emit an internal notification (app_name, summary, body, timeout_ms, urgency 0-2)
gdbus call --session --dest dev.noctalia.Debug --object-path /dev/noctalia/Debug --method dev.noctalia.Debug.EmitInternalNotification "Noctalia" "Test" "Hello from debug" 5000 1

Roadmap

Bar completion and foundation

• Volume OSD
• Notification: history panel

Hardware and networking

• Brightness control + OSD
• Network service (NetworkManager via DBus)
• Bluetooth service (Bluez via DBus)

Desktop shell

• Application launcher / search
• Control center panel (Weather, Media, Audio vol., )
• Keyboard layout switching
• PipeWire audio spectrum
• Clipboard manager
• Host/distro detection
• [~] Lock screen (ext-session-lock-v1) <- still needs polish
• Idle inhibitor (prevent sleep)
• More compositors (Mango, Sway, Labwc)

Theming and customization

• Palette generation (port python implementation to c++)
• Dark/light mode switching
• Settings panel
• I18n / translations
• Blur and advanced visual effects
• Night light (wlsunset)
• Sound effects

Ecosystem

• Geolocation (weather)
• Compositor integration (Hyprland)
• Desktop widgets
• Update checker
• Calendar integration
• Plugin system

Controls (src/ui/controls/)

• Scroll view
• List view
• Checkbox
• Radio button
• Tab bar
• Grid view
• Context menu
• Color picker

Widgets

• [~] Tray
• Network
• Bluetooth
• Brightness
• Media mini
• Microphone
• Power profile
• System monitor
• Active window
• Dock
• Keyboard layout
• Lock keys (Caps/Num)
• Dark mode button
• Night light button
• Keep awake (idle inhibitor)
• Audio visualizer
• Launcher button
• Control center button
• Session menu button
• Settings button
• Wallpaper selector button
• Custom button (user-defined IPC)

Desktop Widgets

• Clock
• Media player
• System stats
• Audio visualizer
• Weather