Port conky to Metal

[npyl]

Problem

X11 support is limited on macOS (see #5 , #37 , #29) and will probably become obsolete in the next few years now that Metal has made its way in, even OpenGL is considered obsolete by apple.

Solution

There are 2 solutions to this problem:

• Add more #ifdefs inside conky for Metal stuff
• Create a library that will bridge Xlib API to Metal API

The second option seems to be the best in our case, I am not sure if it is do-able yet but I am willing to try it out.

Caveats

In the linux world there exists the need to switch to more modern APIs (see Wayland) and ditch Xlib. This is understandable and a positive move for the longevity of the project. Problem is, if conky decides to transition to wayland our approach will be useless.

(Once solution to this would be to start a port of conky to wayland and implement a translation layer between wayland and metal.)

Epilogue

I am positive that if the bridge gets implemented then there is a big possibility that the Xquartz related problems will be fixed and conky will be able to run on macOS just like it does on linux.

[npyl]

I have already began a project to aid the port: https://github.com/npyl/xlib2metal
Checkout the 1st milestone.

I will seriously need more contributors to stack up so that this port is made true.

[npyl]

After the talk with people from the brndnmtthws#56 I decided that xlib2metal is not a good plan... 😢

Awesome people from the conky community are implementing a GUI backend inside conky that will be graphics-library unaware and will be able to use Metal if compiled for macOS, wayland if compiled for Unix or even Xlib if using legacy mode...

This means we are not going for any of the 2 options, we are actually going for a better one!

Ongoing PR

[skhattane]

@npyl any news about this ? Does it means that we are not able to have transparent background on MacOS X Mojave actually ?

[npyl]

Hi @skhattane !!!
We have good news! Most likely than not, in the future conky will use native Metal graphics on macOS and transparency will be implemented.
We just need this PR to be merged first.

(Actually, since it is in a really good state already, I could probably take a look sooner! :) )

[skhattane]

Hi @npyl, thank you so much ;)