libinput 1.30 Released With Support For Writing Plug-Ins In Lua

Red Hat's leading Linux input expert Peter Hutterer released libinput 1.30 today as the newest update to this input handling library used on both X.Org and Wayland desktops.

Easily most significant in libinput 1.30 and of any libinput release in recent times is introducing a Lua-based plug-in system. Lua plug-ins for libinput make it easy to modify device and input events in a secure/sandboxed manner. Here's an example of a Lua libinput plug-in to swap left and right mouse buttons:

Peter Hutterer explained of the new plug-in system:

"Lua plugins sit logically between libinput and the kernel and can modify the evdev event stream from a device. A plugin may change the capabilities of a device (e.g. enabling/disabling event codes) and/or change selected events. Further more, plugins can disable certain internal libinput features. This allows for custom-tailored behavior for cases where hardware doesn't match what libinput expects (or is willing to implement), e.g. mice with very specific button debouncing behaviours."

The libinput 1.30 release also adds a custom pointer acceleration method for high resolution scroll wheel events, various virtual device handling additions, and new device-specific quirks.

More details on libinput 1.30 via the release announcement.