How to compile Sway and wlroots together from source (on NixOS)

shell.nix

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs-unstable> { }, ... }:
let
  # NOTE: i only need this because of the specifix nixpkgs-unstable I use for my system - you probably wont need this
  pkgsNew = import
    (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/4907e7a50c83b6214239d30a833f59493754eb48.tar.gz")
    { };
in
pkgs.mkShell {
  name = "wlroots";
  packages = with pkgs; [
    pkgsNew.libdrm
    libGL
    wayland
    libxkbcommon
    pcre2
    json_c
    libevdev
    pango
    cairo
    libinput
    gdk-pixbuf
    librsvg
    pkgsNew.wayland-protocols
    xorg.xcbutilwm
    pkg-config
    meson
    ninja
    wayland-scanner
    scdoc

    pkg-config
  ];
}

Sway_wlroots_nixos_process.md

How to compile Sway and wlroots together from source (on NixOS)

I came up with this process when I needed to compile the latest commit of Sway to test a new feature, and my distro (NixOS) didn't have the required wlroots version packaged so I needed to compile that too. Here are the commands I ran for each repo:

1) wlroots

git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots

(NixOS users: use a shell.nix to get all the necessary deps. A sample file is attached to this gist) Now you can compile wlroots. Notes:

• -Doptimization avoids compile errors due to default nix fortify flags
• --prefix tells meson to use a new out subdir as the prefix instead of the default /usr/local

meson setup build -Ddebug=true -Doptimization=2 --prefix=/home/<user>/dev/wlroots/build/out
ninja -C build install # installs to the previously specified prefix

2) Sway

git clone https://github.com/swaywm/sway/

(NixOS users: another nearly identical shell.nix can be used to get all of Sway's deps (not shown)) Now, the fun part: setup Sway to use our local wlroots

PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR="/home/<user>/dev/wlroots/build/out/lib/pkgconfig/" meson setup build -Ddebug=true -Doptimization=2

And now compile:

ninja -C build