Cargo and Dependencies

ashell’s dependencies are managed in Cargo.toml. This chapter covers the key dependencies and why they’re used.

Core Dependencies

UI Framework

Crate	Version	Purpose
`iced` (iced_layershell)	Git (`v0.6.0`)	GUI framework with Wayland layer shell support via iced_layershell

The dependency is aliased as iced in Cargo.toml (package = "iced_layershell"). It uses these features:

tokio — Async runtime integration
advanced — Custom widget support
wgpu — GPU-accelerated rendering
tiny-skia — Software rendering fallback
image, svg, canvas — Graphics capabilities

Async Runtime

Crate	Version	Purpose
`tokio`	1	Async runtime for services
`tokio-stream`	0.1	Stream utilities

Compositor Integration

Crate	Version	Purpose
`hyprland`	Git (`master`)	Hyprland IPC client
`niri-ipc`	26.4	Niri IPC client

System Integration

Crate	Version	Purpose
`zbus`	6	D-Bus client (BlueZ, NM, UPower, etc.)
`libpulse-binding`	2.28	PulseAudio client library
`pipewire`	0.10	PipeWire integration
`wayland-client`	0.31	Wayland protocol client
`wayland-protocols`	0.32	Wayland protocol definitions
`sysinfo`	0.39	CPU, RAM, disk, network statistics
`udev`	0.9	Device monitoring

Configuration

Crate	Version	Purpose
`toml`	1	TOML config file parsing
`serde`	1.0	Serialization/deserialization
`serde_json`	1	JSON parsing (custom modules, compositor IPC, weather)
`serde_with`	3.12	Advanced serde derivation
`clap`	4.5	CLI argument parsing
`inotify`	0.11.1	File change watching

Utilities

Crate	Version	Purpose
`chrono`	0.4	Date/time handling
`chrono-tz`	0.10.4	Timezone support
`regex`	1.12.2	Regular expressions (config parsing)
`hex_color`	3	Hex color parsing in config
`itertools`	0.15	Iterator utilities
`anyhow`	1	Error handling
`log`	0.4	Logging facade
`flexi_logger`	0.31	Logging implementation
`signal-hook`	0.4.3	Unix signal handling (SIGUSR1)
`reqwest`	0.13	HTTP client (weather data, media artwork)
`url`	2.5.7	URL parsing
`shellexpand`	3	Tilde/env var expansion in paths
`libc`	0.2.182	System call interfaces

Build Dependencies

Crate	Version	Purpose
`allsorts`	0.17	Font parsing and subsetting in `build.rs`

Git Sources

Three dependencies come from git instead of crates.io:

iced_layershell (aliased as iced) — pinned to tag v0.6.0
hyprland — tracks the master branch
softbuffer — replaced via [patch.crates-io] with a fork (branch wayland-argb) that uses wl_shm Argb8888, so the tiny-skia fallback renderer honors alpha on Wayland (upstream hardcodes Xrgb8888, which the compositor treats as fully opaque). The fork is based on v0.4.8 to match the iced_tiny_skia release iced depends on — rebasing it past 0.4.x will break the patch.

Cargo.lock pins each source to an exact commit, so clones build reproducibly; only an explicit cargo update -p <crate> moves a branch-tracking dependency.

Release Profile

[profile.release]
lto = "thin"       # Link-Time Optimization (balances speed vs compile time)
strip = true       # Remove debug symbols from binary
opt-level = 3      # Maximum optimization
panic = "abort"    # No stack unwinding (smaller binary)

Runtime Package Dependencies

For binary distribution, runtime dependencies are declared in Cargo.toml metadata:

[package.metadata.nfpm]
provides = ["ashell"]

[package.metadata.nfpm.overrides.deb]
depends = ["libxkbcommon0", "libwayland-client0", "libpipewire-0.3-0t64", "libpulse0", "libudev1", "dbus"]

[package.metadata.nfpm.overrides.rpm]
depends = ["libxkbcommon", "libwayland-client", "pipewire-libs", "pulseaudio-libs", "systemd-libs", "dbus"]

Dependencies go under overrides because package names differ per distro (libxkbcommon0 on Debian/Ubuntu, libxkbcommon on Fedora). cargo-nfpm ignores depends in the plain [package.metadata.nfpm.deb] / .rpm tables. When adding a crate that links a new system library, add it to both lists. Check the result with readelf -d target/release/ashell | grep NEEDED.

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