906170400e
Previously, string JSON values were special cased to be provided as bare strings, which means that CFFI modules have to either know what type each value is expected to be, or use a heuristic such as trying to decode and then treating the value as a string on failure. Instead, we can always return JSON, and let the downstream consumer handle deserialising the value into whatever type is expected. The new behaviour is gated on a new ABI version 2: modules built against version 1 will continue to get the old behaviour.
C FFI module
A C FFI module is a dynamic library that exposes standard C functions and constants, that Waybar can load and execute to create custom advanced widgets.
Most language can implement the required functions and constants (C, C++, Rust, Go, Python, ...), meaning you can develop custom modules using your language of choice, as long as there's GTK bindings.
Symbols to implement are documented in the waybar_cffi_module.h file.
Usage
Building this module
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
Load the module
Edit your waybar config:
{
// ...
"modules-center": [
// ...
"cffi/c_example"
],
// ...
"cffi/c_example": {
// Path to the compiled dynamic library file
"module_path": "resources/custom_modules/cffi_example/build/wb_cffi_example.so"
}
}