NAME

river - dynamic tiling Wayland compositor

SYNOPSIS

river [options]

DESCRIPTION

river is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor. Window management is based on a stack of views laid out dynamically by an external layout generator. Tags are used instead of workspaces allowing for increased flexibility.

All configuration and control happens at runtime through Wayland protocols, including several river-specific protocol extensions. The riverctl(1) utility may be used to communicate with river over these protocols.

OPTIONS

-h

Print a help message and exit.

-version

Print the version number and exit.

-c shell_command

Override the default search paths for an init executable: instead shell_command will be run with /bin/sh -c. See the CONFIGURATION section for more details.

-log-level [error|warn|info|debug]

Set the log level of river. At the error log level, only errors are logged. At the debug log level, everything is logged including verbose debug messages.

CONFIGURATION

On startup river will run an executable file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/river/init if such an executable exists. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, ~/.config/river/init will be used instead.

The executable init file will be run as a process group leader after river's Wayland server is initialized but before entering the main loop. On exit, river will send SIGTERM to this process group.

Usually this executable is a shell script invoking riverctl(1) to create mappings, start programs such as a layout generator or status bar, and perform other configuration.

ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variables are used to configure the keyboard. See xkeyboard-config(7) for possible values.

•XKB_DEFAULT_MODEL

•XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT

•XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT

•XKB_DEFAULT_OPTIONS

•XKB_DEFAULT_RULES

EXAMPLES

Set the keyboard layout to colemak:

XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT="us(colemak)" river

AUTHORS

Maintained by Isaac Freund <mail@isaacfreund.com> who is assisted by open source contributors. For more information about river's development, see <https://github.com/riverwm/river>.