Casilda 1.2.4 Released

Casilda, the tiny Wayland compositor widget for GTK 4, has a new release: 1.2.4. The update builds on a quick 1.2 port to wlroots 0.19 (Debian dropped 0.18) and a stint of bug-chasing that started with a texture-leak crash on the maintainer’s new laptop. That debugging run led to a Gtk fix from Benjamin for Vulkan drivers that return dmabufs with fewer fds than planes, and then — well — the author decided to clear the backlog. The result: a release that finally makes Casilda feel like a proper compositor instead of a clever demo.

Fractional scale and sharper rendering

The headline fix is fractional scale support. Previously Casilda only supported integer scaling — 200% yes, 125% no — which meant clients were either rendered at the wrong scale or looked blurry when you switched scales. Input coordinates didn’t line up with the backing texture either, so windows could feel off by a pixel or two. The fix boils down to computing the surface origin (including window shadows and widget offset) and snapping logical coordinates to the device pixel grid. Long story short: things now render sharply at 1.25x and friends. Who likes blurry UI? Nobody. Victory dance: permitted.

Polishing touches

There’s more: keyboard-layout changes are now delivered to clients, popup positioners get the information they need so menus don’t get chopped off, and Casilda implements the cursor-shape protocol that Gtk 4 expects (avoiding the blurry 32×32 fallback cursor). The compositor also gained viewporter support and other small cleanups. The author thanks community contributors — emersion, Matthias and Benjamin among them — for help and testing. Release notes mention fractional scale and viewporter support among the highlights; the full post has the details and code snippets for the curious.

Sources: blogs.gnome.org, Lobsters