Weston Gets Tailored For Tizen IVI, Car Makers Fond Of Wayland

Patches are continuing to be reviewed and refined for introducing weston-ivi-shell, a reference shell for Wayland's Weston compositor within the world of In-Vehicle Infotainment systems, primarily for Tizen.

Nobuhiko Tanibata of the Japanese DENSO company has been spearheading work that's been public since the beginning of March for providing a reference shell for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems. The developer originally explained, "This patch series adds a reference implementation of a shell for In-Vehicle Infotainment system; IVI, libraries on the shell to manage layout of User interface; UI, and samples how to use them."

This prototype shell has been worked on for Tizen IVI and the developer was also toying with GENIVI's Wayland IVI extension and various private projects by car vendors working on a Wayland-based shell. About the IVI use-case, the developer explained, "In-Vehicle Infotainment system traditionally manages surfaces with global identification. A protocol, ivi_application, supports such a feature by implementing a request, ivi_application::surface_creation defined in ivi_application.xml. Additionally, it initialize a library, weston-layout, to manage properties of surfaces and group surfaces in layer."

Going back to last year there's been IVI shell work for Wayland and other work for enhancing Wayland in the car space. One of the big backers of Wayland for this market has been the non-profit GENIVI Alliance focused on providing a Linux-based OS for the IVI industry. GENIVI is backed by BMW, GM, Hyundai, Jaguar, Nissan, Renault, Delphi, Intel, and other companies.

Developers wishing to see the latest weston-ivi-shell patches can find the just-posted work on the Wayland-devel mailing list.