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wayray/CLAUDE.md
Till Wegmueller a373ea1c41
Add greeter/session-launch architecture, clarify scope boundary 
WayRay is a compositor, not a DE or login system. GNOME/KDE cannot
run on WayRay (they ARE compositors). The desktop is composed from
independent Wayland clients (pluggable WM + panel + launcher + apps).

- ADR-010: Greeter as Wayland client, external session launcher
  handles PAM/user env (like greetd for Sway)
- Clarify scope: WayRay owns compositor session + token binding,
  not user auth, home dirs, or environment setup
- Update roadmap with greeter phase and session.toml config
- Update architecture overview with scope boundary section
2026-03-28 21:35:18 +01:00

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WayRay - SunRay-like Thin Client Wayland Compositor

Project Overview

WayRay is a modern reimplementation of Oracle/Sun's SunRay thin client architecture as a Wayland compositor written in Rust. The goal is to provide stateless thin client computing with session mobility, hot-desking, and zero-state endpoints over a modern protocol stack.

Target Platforms

  • illumos (OpenIndiana, OmniOS, SmartOS) - Primary target, honoring SunRay's Solaris heritage
  • Linux - Full support with optional GPU acceleration
  • Architecture is headless-first: Smithay with default-features = false, no dependency on DRM/KMS, libinput, udev, or libseat in the core path. Platform-specific backends behind feature flags.

Language & Stack

  • Language: Rust (edition 2024)
  • Compositor Framework: Smithay (Wayland compositor library)
  • Event Loop: calloop (callback-based, not async)
  • Networking: QUIC via quinn for low-latency multiplexed transport
  • Encoding: H.264/AV1 via VAAPI/NVENC for display, Opus for audio
  • Error Reporting: miette with diagnostic patterns for user-facing errors
  • ORM: SeaORM for any database needs (never raw SQL)
  • Logging: tracing crate

Architecture

WayRay consists of four main components:

  1. wayray-server (compositor) - Smithay-based Wayland compositor that runs applications, captures framebuffers, and transmits them to clients. Exposes a pluggable WM protocol.
  2. wayray-client (viewer) - Lightweight display client that decodes frames, renders them locally, captures input, and sends it to the server
  3. wayray-protocol - Shared protocol definitions for the WayRay wire protocol over QUIC
  4. wayray-ctl - CLI management tool for server/session administration

Documentation

  • docs/ai/plans/ - Implementation plans
  • docs/ai/adr/ - Architecture Decision Records
  • docs/architecture/ - System architecture documentation
  • docs/protocols/ - Protocol specifications
  • book/ - mdbook user guide (build with mdbook build book/)

Key Design Decisions

  • Headless-first: No hard dependency on GPU, DRM, or Linux-specific subsystems
  • illumos + Linux: Portable core, platform-specific backends behind feature flags
  • Pluggable Window Management: External WM process via custom Wayland protocol (River-inspired two-phase transaction model). Ships with built-in floating WM as default.
  • Compositor, not a DE: Cannot run GNOME/KDE (they ARE compositors). Desktop composed from independent Wayland clients (WM + panel + launcher + apps). Like Sway's ecosystem.
  • Greeter as Wayland client: Login screen is a regular Wayland app, not a separate compositor. External session launcher handles PAM/user env (like greetd for Sway).
  • WayRay does NOT own: user auth, home dir mounting, PAM, user environment setup. Those are the host system's job. WayRay owns the compositor session and token binding.
  • QUIC over TCP for network transport (multiplexing, 0-RTT reconnect)
  • PixmanRenderer for headless server (no GPU needed), GlesRenderer when GPU available
  • Damage-tracked differential frame encoding
  • Smart card / token-based session mobility (hot-desking)
  • Userspace USB forwarding over QUIC (not kernel USB/IP, for portability)
  • Audio: PipeWire (Linux) or PulseAudio (illumos/Linux) behind trait abstraction
  • shm_open fallback when memfd_create unavailable (illumos portability)

Conventions

  • Use miette's diagnostic pattern for all user-facing errors with helpful messages
  • Never use raw SQL - use SeaORM entities
  • Docker builds must use current Rust version with target-platform-specific caches
  • Clean up unused variables but investigate if design changes caused them to become unused
  • Use context7 for library documentation lookups