Xwayland testing environment setup

Xwayland Testing Setup

This page details the instructions for setting up Xwayland testing on Fedora (Fedora 42 at the time of this writing).

Dependencies

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install @development-tools
sudo dnf install @rpm-development-tools
sudo dnf install fedpkg
sudo dnf builddep -y xorg-x11-server-Xwayland

Prepare sources and RPM build tree

sudo dnf download --source xorg-x11-server-Xwayland 
rpmdev-setuptree
rpm -ivh xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-*.src.rpm

should yield the following files

~/$ tree rpmbuild
.
├── BUILD
├── RPMS
├── SOURCES
│   └── xwayland-24.1.8.tar.xz
├── SPECS
│   └── xorg-x11-server-Xwayland.spec
└── SRPMS

Obtain patch and move it to SOURCES

curl -L "https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/<ID>.patch" -o ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/mypatch.patch

replace <ID> with the merge request number

Declare patch in spec

If "%autosetup% is not present in the Xwayland spec file, add the following line after %endif that holds Source0 and before %prep:

patch mypatch.patch

Validate patch and build

rpmbuild -bp ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/xorg-x11-server-Xwayland.spec 
rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/xorg-x11-server-Xwayland.spec 

Make sure build results in the binaries:

$ uname -m
$ ls -lh rpmbuild/RPMS/$(uname -m)/
example output: 
total 5.6M
-rw-r--r--. 1 eas eas 1.1M Sep 30 16:15 xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-24.1.8-1.fc42.x86_64.rpm
-rw-r--r--. 1 eas eas 3.4M Sep 30 16:15 xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-debuginfo-24.1.8-1.fc42.x86_64.rpm
-rw-r--r--. 1 eas eas 1.3M Sep 30 16:15 xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-debugsource-24.1.8-1.fc42.x86_64.rpm
-rw-r--r--. 1 eas eas  11K Sep 30 16:15 xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-devel-24.1.8-1.fc42.x86_64.rpm

Verify your current version and install rpms

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
$ rpm -qi xorg-x11-server-Xwayland | grep -E '^(Version|Release|Install Date|Build Date|Build Host|Vendor|Packager|Signature)'
(optional) $ rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/Xwayland

example output:

Version     : 24.1.8
Release     : 1.fc42
Install Date: Tue 30 Sep 2025 02:53:53 PM PDT
Signature   : RSA/SHA256, Wed 18 Jun 2025 10:26:16 AM PDT, Key ID c8ac4916105ef944
Build Date  : Wed 18 Jun 2025 10:19:16 AM PDT
Build Host  : buildvm-x86-30.iad2.fedoraproject.org
Packager    : Fedora Project
Vendor      : Fedora Project

Test existing installation and install the rpms you built

$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
$ sudo dnf install krita (or similar)
<test for bug which should be present>
$ sudo dnf install ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/xorg-x11-server-Xwayland-*.rpm

Restart Wayland session and logout.

Verify patched build

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
$ rpm -qi xorg-x11-server-Xwayland | grep -E '^(Version|Release|Install Date|Build Date|Build Host|Vendor|Packager|Signature)'
(optional) $ rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/Xwayland