A fast and minimal wallpaper engine for HyDE

Use wallbash as a core component of your Wayland desktop environment — set wallpapers, generate color palettes, and dynamically theme your desktop.

• Vulkan-powered GPU acceleration for smooth performance
• Color palette generation for dynamic theming (WIP)
• Fluid transitions and animations (WIP)
• Multi-monitor support (WIP)
• Scale and anchor the image to your liking
• Dynamic blur fill for mismatched aspect ratios to eliminate black bars

git clone https://github.com/prasanthrangan/wallbash
cd wallbash
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/wallbash /usr/local/bin/

wallbash start                  #  Start the wallpaper daemon
wallbash set /path/to/file.img  #  Set wallpaper (auto start daemon)
wallbash stop                   #  Stop the daemon
wallbash status                 #  Show daemon status

        ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │ ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐ │
        │ │  (1)            (2)            (3)  │ │
        │ │                                     │ │
        │ │  (4)            (5)            (6)  │ │
        │ │                                     │ │
        │ │  (7)            (8)            (9)  │ │
        │ └─────────────────────────────────────┘ │
        └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

wallbash set [option] <value>
    -m, --mode <mode>           # Scaling mode (cover, fit, original)
    -a, --anchor <1-9>          # Anchor point (1=top-left ... 9=bottom-right)
    -w, --wall <path>           # Wallpaper file /path/to/file.img

The Rust binary compiles to a single executable, wallbash. It acts as both a client and a daemon:

• wallbash start Launches the daemon (background process). The daemon initializes the Wayland and Vulkan subsystems and listens for commands on a Unix socket.
• wallbash set Sends a command to load and display the image. If the daemon is not running, it automatically starts it and waits for it to be ready before sending the command.
• wallbash stop Terminate the daemon.
• wallbash status Query the daemon status.

src/
├── main.rs
├── wallbash.rs
├── wayland.rs
└── vulkan.rs

The core project is structured in simple modules:

• main.rs Entry point of the binary. Works as a CLI tool to parse arguments and handle the daemon.
• wallbash.rs The core daemon module. It manages the IPC listener, handles incoming commands, and orchestrates the wallpaper loading and rendering process.
• wayland.rs Handles the Wayland integration. It creates a Wayland surface, binds to the layer shell protocol, and sets up the layer surface for the wallpaper.
• vulkan.rs Manages the Vulkan rendering pipeline. It initializes the Vulkan instance, selects a physical device (preferring a discrete GPU), creates a swapchain, and renders the wallpaper image.