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Winit Backend

The Winit backend uses the winit library to interact with the windowing system.

The Winit backend supports practically all relevant operating systems and windowing systems, including macOS, Windows, Linux with Wayland and X11.

The Winit backend supports different renderers. They can be explicitly selected for use through the SLINT_BACKEND environment variable.

Renderer nameSupported/Required Graphics APIsSLINT_BACKEND value to select renderer
FemtoVGOpenGLwinit-femtovg
SkiaOpenGL, Metal, Direct3D, Software-renderingwinit-skia
Skia SoftwareSoftware-only rendering with Skiawinit-skia-software
Skia OpenGLOpenGL rendering with Skiawinit-skia-opengl
softwareSoftware-rendering, no GPU requiredwinit-software

If no renderer is explicitly set, the backend will first try to use the Skia renderer, if it was enabled at compile time. If that fails, it will fall back to the FemtoVG renderer, and if that also fails, it will use the software renderer.

Configuration Options

The Winit backend reads and interprets the following environment variables:

NameAccepted ValuesDescription
SLINT_FULLSCREENany valueIf this variable is set, every window is shown in fullscreen mode.

Linux Dependencies

On Linux, the Winit backend requires either X11 or Wayland to be available. Support of either can be enabled or disabled at compile time by setting the backend-winit-x11 or backend-winit-wayland features (instead of backend-winit).

For X11 the following runtime dependencies are required: libx11-xcb, xinput, libxcursor, libxkbcommon-x11, libx11. On Debian-based systems, these can be installed with:

Terminal window
sudo apt install libx11-xcb-dev xinput libxcursor-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libx11-dev
bash

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