After a year of development, presented desktop engine Arcan 0.7.1, combining a display server, a multimedia framework and a game engine for processing 3D graphics. Arcan can be used to create a variety of graphical systems – from user interfaces for embedded applications to self-contained desktop environments. Based on Arcan, a three-dimensional user environment for virtual reality systems Safespaces and a desktop environment Durden are built. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the BSD license (some components are under GPLv2+ and LGPL).
Arcan is not tied to individual graphics subsystems and can work on top of various system environments (BSD, Linux, macOS, Windows) using plug-in backends. For example, it is possible to run on top of Xorg, egl-dri, libsdl and AGP (GL/GLES). The Arcan display server can run client applications based on X11, Wayland and SDL. The project is developing its fork of the X.org server – xarcan, as well as a composite server arcan-wayland (waybridge), which allows you to run Wayland-based applications.
Key design criteria for the Arcan API include security, performance, and debuggability. To simplify the development of interfaces, it is proposed to use the Lua language.
Features Arcan:
- Combination of the capabilities of a composite server, display server and window manager.
- Support for work in stand-alone mode, in which an Arcan-based application is a self-contained unit that works without additional graphic layers.
- Built-in multimedia framework that provides tools for working with graphics, processing streaming video and sound, animation, loading images, working with video capture devices.
- Multi-process model for connecting processors of data sources (for example, video streams and output of running programs).
- Rigid model privilege separation
