[oe-core][PATCHv13 0/6] Display manager proposal for x11 and wayland

rs
2025-12-23T22:01:47Z

Hello maintainers, I wanted to wait for the latest tag to get cut before
bringing this back up, but here it is. This version addresses most of the
concerns I've seen regarding this series and adds on a little more functionality
considering we now allow for proper session selection.

This led me into a bit of a dive into the desktop-entry-spec [1] and associated
validator [2] that I wouldn't mind some opinions on as well if people are
curious about that.

Legacy details follow:

We've recently run into some issues with weston-init attempting to start Weston
prior to all drm devices being registered. There's not really a good, scriptable
mechanism to listen in to device registration events that works with the
existing weston-init package. Well, at least one that doesn't involve polling
files or introducing more dependency on the init system being used.

I also see there is also a lot of scripting around starting X11,
xserver-nodm-init, that (from my limited review) should experience the same
issue.

I'd like to introduce the following display manager for oe-core, emptty [3].
This display manager is, as described upstream, a "Dead simple CLI Display
Manager on TTY". It supports both x11 and wayland sessions, with togglable build
parameters to completely remove x11 and pam dependencies. It's licensed MIT,
which shouldn't be an issue for any users. (It is written in Go, if you have
opinions about that.)

With this, both weston-init and the xserver-nodm-init packages can be re-tuned
to leverage this display manager and simply add a user and emptty config for an
autologin session. This can resolve the current behavior across init systems
without additional scripting, and move some development out of this layer.

This lists myself as a maintainer of emptty as well as xserver-nodm-init and
xuser-account since these are currently unassigned and I've reworked them
significantly here.

Sorry for the delay on this series. I found a few bugs in emptty that I wanted
to address before submitting this officially.

[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_requests/110
[2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/desktop-file-utils/-/merge_requests/28
[3] https://github.com/tvrzna/emptty

v2:
- Address spelling issues in commit messages
- Attempt to resolve some test related issues with weston
- Add additional logs to X11 related tests
v3:
- Reset AUTOLOGIN_MAX_RETRY to the default value of 2. When running
under QEMU the first auth attempt almost always fails.
v4:
- Add a tmpfile entry for the x11 domain socket directory.
- Remove some scripts associated with weston-init that were being
shipped with weston
v5:
- Move tmpfile data to individual files
- Add explicit entries for these in the FILES variable
v6:
- Do not attempt to ship a tmpfiles.d entry in libx11
v7:
- Include a backported fix for go/runtime to address segfault issues
reported on x86 platforms in previous revisions
v8:
- Sign-off backported patch
v9:
- Resolve merge conflict in maintainers file
v10:
- Remove the ability to run x11 as root in xserver-nodm-init, see
https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-core/topic/115318655#msg223906
for more information
- Merge xuser-account and xserver-nodm-init as this is now a direct
dependency with no other consumers
- Fix warning about multiple providers for virtual-emptty-conf
v11:
- Bump emptty revision to 0.15.0
- Add session entries for all the session providers
- Make autologin default session configurable for xserver-nodm-init
v12:
- Add util-linux-mcookie as a runtime dependency to emptty when x11
support is enabled
v13:
- Add nopasswdlogin to the static group definitions list, also register
it in the emptty recipe itself since the pam rule provided in that
package mentions it
- Always ship the legacy inittab entry, since it's possible the end user
has some unusual distro configuration with multiple init managers
enabled

Randolph Sapp (6):
emptty: add version 0.15.0
weston-init: convert to virtual-emptty-conf
weston: remove deprecated weston-start scripts
xserver-nodm-init: convert to virtual-emptty-conf
xuser-account: merge with xserver-nodm-init
xsessions: add unique desktop entries

meta-selftest/files/static-group | 2 +-
.../conf/distro/include/default-providers.inc | 1 +
meta/conf/distro/include/maintainers.inc | 5 +-
meta/lib/oeqa/runtime/cases/weston.py | 18 +-
meta/lib/oeqa/runtime/cases/xorg.py | 8 +
meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty-conf.bb | 14 +
meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty.inc | 26 ++
.../recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty/emptty.tab | 1 +
meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty/pamconf | 10 +
meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty_0.15.0.bb | 59 +++
.../matchbox-session/matchbox-session.desktop | 6 +
.../matchbox-session/matchbox-session_0.1.bb | 13 +-
.../files/mini-x-session.desktop | 6 +
.../mini-x-session/mini-x-session_0.1.bb | 13 +-
meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init.bb | 66 +---
.../wayland/weston-init/emptty.conf | 77 ++++
.../recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/init | 54 ---
.../wayland/weston-init/weston-autologin | 11 -
.../wayland/weston-init/weston-socket.sh | 20 -
.../wayland/weston-init/weston-start | 76 ----
.../wayland/weston-init/weston.env | 0
.../wayland/weston-init/weston.service | 71 ----
.../wayland/weston-init/weston.socket | 14 -
.../weston/systemd-notify.weston-start | 9 -
.../wayland/weston/xwayland.weston-start | 6 -
.../recipes-graphics/wayland/weston_14.0.2.bb | 10 -
.../x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/X11/Xsession | 38 --
.../X11/Xsession.d/13xdgbasedirs.sh | 19 -
.../X11/Xsession.d/89xdgautostart.sh | 7 -
.../X11/Xsession.d/90XWindowManager.sh | 7 -
.../x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/Xserver | 25 --
.../xserver-nodm-init/capability.conf | 2 -
.../xserver-nodm-init/emptty.conf.in | 77 ++++
.../xserver-nodm-init/gplv2-license.patch | 355 ------------------
.../xserver-nodm-init}/system-xuser.conf | 0
.../x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm | 75 ----
.../xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm.conf.in | 7 -
.../xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm.service.in | 13 -
.../x11-common/xserver-nodm-init_3.0.bb | 73 ++--
.../user-creation/xuser-account_0.1.bb | 30 --
40 files changed, 349 insertions(+), 975 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty-conf.bb
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty.inc
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty/emptty.tab
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty/pamconf
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty_0.15.0.bb
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/matchbox-session/matchbox-session/matchbox-session.desktop
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/mini-x-session/files/mini-x-session.desktop
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/emptty.conf
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/init
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston-autologin
delete mode 100755 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston-socket.sh
delete mode 100755 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston-start
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston.env
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston.service
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston-init/weston.socket
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston/systemd-notify.weston-start
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/wayland/weston/xwayland.weston-start
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/X11/Xsession
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/X11/Xsession.d/13xdgbasedirs.sh
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/X11/Xsession.d/89xdgautostart.sh
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/X11/Xsession.d/90XWindowManager.sh
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/Xserver
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/capability.conf
create mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/emptty.conf.in
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/gplv2-license.patch
rename meta/{recipes-support/user-creation/files => recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init}/system-xuser.conf (100%)
delete mode 100755 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm.conf.in
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-graphics/x11-common/xserver-nodm-init/xserver-nodm.service.in
delete mode 100644 meta/recipes-support/user-creation/xuser-account_0.1.bb

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2.51.1