Wayland Protocols 1.22 Released With DRM Object Leasing Support For VR HMDs

Designed with VR headsets in mind, Wayland-Protocols 1.22 was released today and adds the DRM leasing protocol to its staging area.

The DRM lease protocol is modeled around Linux's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) object leasing where the DRM master is able to "lease" a subset of resources to a client. In the case of this Wayland protocol it's about leasing DRM resources for exclusive use by a Wayland client.

As with the DRM leasing code itself, the Wayland DRM lease protocol is pushed along by virtual reality head-mounted displays. With this support, Wayland clients can now request exclusive access to a VR HMD. The X11 support around DRM leasing has been settled whole now with Wayland-Protocols 1.22 the protocol support is debuting in staging form.

There is code pending already for at least Sway/WLROOTS and KDE's KWin/KWaylandServer for lease support. GNOME Mutter developers have also looked at it as well. There is also XWayland DRM leasing patches pending.

The other mostly mundane changes with Wayland-Protocols 1.22 can be found via its release announcement.