can't see cursor under wayfire

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
76/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
cpp
Domain
backend, desktop

Research direction

Start with src/core/seat/cursor.cpp and check how the cursor manager is created and used with wlroots 0.19. The report says wlr_xcursor_manager_load is missing; confirm the relevant wlroots API and how output scale is handled. Done means the cursor image appears in the reported Wayfire setup, with a suitable regression check if the project has one.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug

Wayfire version

0.10.1-2.fc45 (Fedora 45, wlroots-0.19.3)

GPU / Driver

VMware virtual machine (vmwgfx driver)

Describe the bug

In wayfire the mouse cursor is not visible: the mouse still responds (window borders highlight on hover), but the cursor image itself is not displayed. On the same machine, the cursor in niri works normally. sddm starts wayfire as a Wayland session (DRM backend).

Root cause (confirmed; unrelated to cursor theme data): due to API changes starting from wlroots 0.19, wlr_xcursor_manager_create(name, size) only creates an empty manager and no longer loads the theme; the theme must be loaded separately by calling wlr_xcursor_manager_load(manager, scale) (compositors should call it when each output is created, according to its scale). Fedora's wayfire 0.10.1 never calls wlr_xcursor_manager_load (source src/core/seat/cursor.cpp only contains create/destroy/set_xcursor; upstream master likewise lacks it).

To Reproduce

  1. Run wayfire 0.10.1-2.fc45 on wlroots-0.19.x
  2. Observe the mouse cursor image not being displayed

Expected behavior

The mouse cursor image should be visible, as it is in niri on the same machine.

Screenshots / Videos / Stacktrace

N/A — no crash; visual issue only.

Additional context

Long-term / alternative options:

  • File a bug upstream against wayfire (0.10.1 is missing the wlr_xcursor_manager_load call) / wait for a Fedora update to fix it;
  • Or use niri as the daily driver (the cursor has always worked there).
Dominant language
C++
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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