Installation

This guide walks you through setting up Guido for development.

System Requirements

Wayland Compositor

Guido requires a Wayland compositor with layer shell protocol support. Compatible compositors include:

• Sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor
• Hyprland - Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor
• river - Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor
• wayfire - 3D Wayland compositor

Note: X11 is not supported. Guido is designed specifically for Wayland layer shell applications.

System Dependencies

Install the required development libraries for your distribution:

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S wayland wayland-protocols libxkbcommon

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install wayland-devel libxkbcommon-devel

Adding Guido to Your Project

New Project

Create a new Rust project and add Guido:

cargo new my-app
cd my-app
cargo add guido

Existing Project

Add Guido to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
guido = "0.1"

Or use cargo:

cargo add guido

Verifying Installation

Create a minimal test application to verify everything works:

// src/main.rs
use guido::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    App::new().run(|app| {
        app.add_surface(
            SurfaceConfig::new()
                .width(200)
                .height(100)
                .background_color(Color::rgb(0.1, 0.1, 0.15)),
            || {
                container()
                    .padding(20.0)
                    .background(Color::rgb(0.2, 0.3, 0.4))
                    .child(text("Hello, Guido!").color(Color::WHITE))
            },
        );
    });
}

Run the application:

cargo run

If you see a small window with “Hello, Guido!” text, the installation is successful.

Troubleshooting

“No Wayland display” Error

Ensure you’re running in a Wayland session, not X11:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE  # Should output "wayland"

Compositor Doesn’t Support Layer Shell

Some Wayland compositors (like GNOME’s Mutter) don’t support the layer shell protocol. Use a compatible compositor listed above.

Missing Libraries

If you get linker errors about missing libraries, ensure the system dependencies are installed. The error messages usually indicate which library is missing.

Next Steps

Now that Guido is installed, continue to the Hello World tutorial to build your first application.