# riverwm/river

[mirror] A non-monolithic Wayland compositor

Repository: https://github.com/riverwm/river
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/riverwm-river
Homepage: https://codeberg.org/river/river
Language: Zig
License Family: other
Topics: wayland, wayland-compositor, window-manager, zig, wlroots
Last push: 2026-08-22T19:22:05+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2357, "days_push": 11, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4264, forks 168 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:40.678066+00:00)

## What it is
River is a non-monolithic Wayland compositor written in Zig that separates the compositor from the window manager, letting users pick or write any window manager implementing the river-window-management-v1 protocol. It provides rendering, input handling, Xwayland support, and stable protocol extensions while deferring all window management policy to a swappable external process.

## Use cases
- run a Wayland compositor with a custom or third-party window manager
- write a Wayland window manager in a high-level language without touching compositor internals
- hot-swap window managers without restarting running Wayland applications
- build a minimal tiling desktop environment on Linux or FreeBSD
- experiment with new window management designs on a stable compositor base

## When to choose
- you want to develop or customize a Wayland window manager with a low barrier to entry
- you need a performant, stable compositor with Xwayland and protocol extension support
- you want to switch window managers without killing your session

## When to avoid
- you want a batteries-included desktop environment with a built-in window manager and shell
- you need a compositor for a distribution that only ships monolithic solutions
- you require a project with a traditional single OSS license file (licensing is REUSE/CC-BY-SA for docs)

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: graphics, gui, developer-tools
- domain: operating-systems, desktop-applications, developer-tools
- platform: bsd, cpp, rust
- tags: wayland-compositor, window-manager, wlroots, zig, tiling, xwayland, linux

## Member repositories
- riverwm/river (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:40.678066+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:22:04.320075+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/riverwm/river (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:40.678066+00:00, sha ed9fee3804c2)
  - homepage: https://codeberg.org/river/river (fetched 2026-08-29T09:12:44.256206+00:00, sha f07b157f861d)
  - site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg (fetched 2026-08-29T09:12:44.265262+00:00, sha fe3047f34c81)
  - site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/faq (fetched 2026-08-29T09:12:44.267014+00:00, sha 7ffd1ab1d66b)
  - site_page: https://docs.codeberg.org (fetched 2026-08-29T09:12:44.270580+00:00, sha 3c642f9d47c9)
  - site_page: https://codeberg.org/river/river/releases (fetched 2026-08-29T09:12:44.268886+00:00, sha 866491561681)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.