The developers of the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) library, aimed at simplifying game and multimedia application development, have canceled the change that would have transitioned the SDL3 branch to default to the Wayland protocol in environments that offer simultaneous support for both Wayland and X11. The reason cited includes existing issues in the Wayland ecosystem related to surface blocking and FIFO (vsync) implementation. These problems lead to reduced performance and cannot be fully resolved without implementing additional protocols fifo-v1 and commit-timing-v1.
It is noted that without resolving these issues, transitioning from X11 to Wayland does not bring any advantages for regular applications and games, but instead leads to significant performance degradation and regressions. The possibility of SDL transitioning to Wayland by default will only be reconsidered after the fifo-v1 and commit-timing-v1 protocols are approved and implemented in stable versions of the main compositors.
Additionally, the first test release of the new SDL 3 branch can be mentioned, which involved the overhaul of some subsystems, introduced breaking changes in the API, and conducted a major cleanup of outdated features that have lost relevance in modern realities. For example, SDL 3 has completely revamped the sound handling code, discontinued support for OpenGL ES 1.0 and DirectFB, and removed code for outdated platforms such as QNX, Pandora, WinRT, and OS/2. The 2D rendering API has added a backend for rendering through the Vulkan API, expanded HDR and color space support, replaced the API for working with transparent windows, added support for video capture from webcams, and enabled the use of tablets and digital pens. New dialogs for opening and saving files have been introduced. Multimedia is now enabled by default. server PipeWire.
Source: opennet.ru
