Developers of the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) library, aimed at simplifying the writing of games and multimedia applications, canceled Change to change the SDL3 branch to use the Wayland protocol by default in environments that provide simultaneous support for Wayland and X11. The reason cited is the presence of issues unresolved in the Wayland ecosystem related to surface locking and FIFO (vsync) implementation. These problems lead to decreased performance and cannot be fully resolved without implementing additional protocols. fifo-v1 And commit-timing-v1.
It is noted that without solving these problems, the transition from X11 to Wayland does not bring any advantages for ordinary applications and games, but only leads to a serious decrease in performance and regressions. They plan to return to considering the possibility of switching SDL to Wayland by default only after the approval of the fifo-v1 and commit-timing-v1 protocols and their implementation in stable versions of the main composite managers.
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In addition, it may be mentioned first test release a new branch of SDL 3, in which some subsystems were reworked, changes were made to the API that violated compatibility, and a large cleanup of outdated features that had lost relevance in modern realities was carried out. For example, in SDL 3 the code for working with sound has been completely redesigned, support for OpenGL ES 1.0 and DirectFB has been discontinued, and code for working on legacy platforms such as QNX, Pandora, WinRT and OS/2 has been removed. A backend for rendering via the Vulkan API has been added to the 2D rendering API, and support for HDR and color spaces has been expanded. The API for working with transparent windows has been replaced. Added support for video capture from web cameras and the ability to use tablets and digital pens. Added new dialogs for opening and saving files. Involved the default media server is PipeWire.
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