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