doc/publican/sources/Server.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
  <!ENTITY % BOOK_ENTITIES SYSTEM "Wayland.ent">
  <!ENTITY doxygen SYSTEM "ServerAPI.xml">
%BOOK_ENTITIES;
]>
<appendix id="sect-Library-Server">
  <title>Server API</title>
  <section><title>Introduction</title>
  <para>
    The open-source reference implementation of Wayland protocol is
    split in two C libraries, <link
    linkend="sect-Library-Client">libwayland-client</link> and
    libwayland-server. Their main responsibility is to handle the
    Inter-process communication (<emphasis>IPC</emphasis>) with each
    other, therefore guaranteeing the protocol objects marshaling and
    messages synchronization.
  </para>
  <para>
    The server library is designed to work much like libwayland-client,
    although it is considerably complicated due to the server needing
    to support multiple versions of the protocol. It is best to learn
    libwayland-client first.
  </para>
  <para>
    Each open socket to a client is represented by a <link
    linkend="Server-structwl__client">wl_client</link>.  The equvalent
    of the <link linkend="Client-classwl__proxy">wl_proxy</link> that
    libwayland-client uses to represent an object is <link
    linkend="Server-structwl__resource">wl_resource</link> for
    client-created objects, and <link
    linkend="Server-structwl__global">wl_global</link> for objects
    created by the server.
  </para>
  <para>
    Often a server is also a client for another Wayland server, and
    thus must link with both libwayland-client and libwayland-server.
    This produces some type name conflicts (such as the <link
    linkend="Client-classwl__display">client wl_display</link> and
    <link linkend="Server-structwl__display">server wl_display</link>,
    but the duplicate-but-not-the-same types are opaque, and accessed
    only inside the correct library where it came from. Naturally that
    means that the program writer needs to always know if a pointer to
    a wl_display is for the server or client side and use the
    corresponding functions.
  </para>
  </section>
  &doxygen;
</appendix>