Re: [oe-core][PATCHv16 0/6] Display manager proposal for x11 and wayland

[Randolph Sapp <rs@ti.com>]

On Fri Feb 27, 2026 at 12:31 PM CST, Randolph Sapp via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> From: Randolph Sapp <rs@ti.com>
>
> No functional changes. Just bumping PR to help with automated testing issues.
>
> Information from v15:
>
> Alright, now that cgo binary reproducibility has been addressed this should be
> good to go. One slight change from v13, I replaced the inittab.d entry with a
> rootfs-postcommands function since busybox-init doesn't support it.
>
> Information from v13:
>
> 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
> v14:
> 	- Move from legacy inittab.d entry that only sysvinit supports to
> 	  modifying the inittab file itself for both sysvinit and busybox init
> 	  support
> v15:
> 	- Remind myself how POSIX shell "return" is supposed to work when not
> 	  given an explicit value
> v16:
> 	- Bump PR to make sure caching isn't generating weird test results after
> 	  changes to source date epoch calculation method
>
>
> 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 +-
>  .../rootfs-postcommands.bbclass               |  14 +-
>  .../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       |  27 ++
>  meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty/pamconf   |  10 +
>  meta/recipes-graphics/emptty/emptty_0.15.0.bb |  55 +++
>  .../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, 358 insertions(+), 976 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/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
>
> --
> 2.53.0

Hey Paul, have you gotten a chance to review this series yet? I've been told you
may have some comments.

Randolph