README.md

Full-height native desktop on the 14-inch M1 Pro

Larger top bar — 2026-10-20

All top-bar indicator groups now render at 130% scale: Applications, clock, CodexBar, RepoBar and system status controls, including explicit font/icon sizes and spacing. The native GTK measurement and allocation both account for the scale, so pointer targets follow the visible controls. Notch clearance and monitor coordinates retain their original geometry; crowded halves still scroll. This is implemented in patches/wingpanel-content-scale.patch, applied by both Wingpanel installers after the startup layout patch. Dropdown windows retain their own sizing. CodexBar hover information stays off.

Installed and loaded through pantheon-wingpanel.service on the owner’s Rust Wayland desktop, retaining its configured GL renderer. Reload with systemctl --user restart pantheon-wingpanel.service. The production scale test (bash mseries/display-space/test-panel-scale.sh) checks 1.30 measurement and coordinate transforms under Xvfb; test-panel-startup.sh also passes with the scale patch, including 20 clock reparent transitions. Physical appearance still needs owner feedback. Adjust CONTENT_SCALE in the patch to tune the size.

Startup repair on the full-height Aurora .20 host

October 18 repair fixes initial unbounded panel sizing, empty/transitioning indicator bars, stale cropped saved modes and the disabled dock readiness timeout. The patched Wingpanel is deployed; full-login validation remains pending. The historical setup description below predates that boot.

bash mseries/install-desktop-space.sh builds the native Wingpanel and elementary dock, installs them, applies a compact dock profile, and prepares a full-height boot choice. Run as the desktop user; system changes use sudo. Reboot when ready. The profile is also an optional post-install stage: bash mseries/post-install.sh --only desktop-space.

The running J314 display exposes 3024×1890 with the camera strip cropped. appledrm.show_notch=1 exposes 3024×1964, restoring 74 physical rows. The camera itself remains opaque. The patched Wingpanel uses the existing date/time indicator and calendar on the left, alongside Applications and CodexBar. On the full-height internal M1 Pro panel, two equal scrollable halves protect a conservative 400 physical-pixel center gap plus 16 logical pixels of clearance. The panel is at least 74 physical pixels tall, scaled to the current logical width. At 2×, that is a 37-pixel bar in the newly exposed strip. Crowded controls scroll within each half rather than covering the camera. Cropped mode and external screens retain the centered native clock. Monitor/scale changes update the layout. Full-screen applications can still draw behind the physical camera.

The dock uses 40 logical-pixel icons and hides when any window overlaps. Existing pinned apps and the drawer integrations are preserved. Command-drag (Control-drag with our Command/Ctrl mapping) saves position to org.techmore.mseries.dock offset. Position is clamped to the current screen and recalculated when the dock size/layout changes. This requires the existing Gala panel protocol v2 patch for movement; stock protocol v1 still works without movement. No polling service is added and no power saving is claimed.

Dock space follows visibility

The private Gala build applies gala-dock-workarea.patch: a visible dock reserves its actual frame height, including the bottom margin. Once the dock is fully hidden, that space returns to the work area. Maximized windows and native half snaps follow Mutter's work area; the quarter plugin now reflows its managed quarters on work-area changes. Windows you resize manually keep their chosen size. Fullscreen applications retain the complete monitor. The reservation only affects the monitor containing the dock, and changing hide modes takes effect without restarting it. Boundary contact still counts as overlap, avoiding an intelligent-hide resize loop. No polling process or per-frame client resize is added.

Install with bash mseries/install-gala-screen-corners.sh followed by bash mseries/install-window-snapping.sh. Both load on the next sign-in; the installers leave the current desktop running. This compositor behavior is separate from the full-height boot profile and requires no boot changes.

bash mseries/display-space/test-dock-workarea.sh tests the real private dock, a GTK Wayland client, native half snaps, all four quarters, repeated reveal/hide, fullscreen and a second monitor in a separate headless Gala. It uses a temporary keyfile settings database and its own D-Bus/Wayland session. To test a staged Gala build, set MSERIES_TEST_GALA_PREFIX to its installed prefix. The quarter plugin must be present in that prefix's lib/gala/plugins. Dock builds can be selected with MSERIES_TEST_DOCK_PREFIX. The existing quarter regression test also accepts MSERIES_TEST_GALA_PREFIX.

Dock activation and session stops

The startup patch waits for Gala's desktop integration before synchronizing workspaces and ignores stale workspace-removal indexes. Repeated activation of an existing dock no longer calls present() or creates another window when the panel is not the active keyboard window. Panel visibility stays with Gala.

The wrapper forwards HUP, INT and TERM to its dock child and waits for it to exit, preventing a normal session stop from leaving an orphaned dock behind. Signal exit statuses do not mark the private build as broken or start the stock dock. Actual early failures, missing binaries and missing libraries retain the stock fallback. SIGKILL cannot be trapped or forwarded by a shell wrapper.

Regression checks:

• bash mseries/dock-tests/test-startup.sh compiles the production activation and workspace methods against controlled native services. It requires git, valac, a C compiler and GLib/GIO development files, and fetches the pinned upstream dock. MSERIES_DOCK_SOURCE can select a local Git checkout at the same source revision; only its committed files are read.
• python3 mseries/dock-tests/test-launcher.py executes the generated wrapper with private fake binaries, including signal forwarding, child reaping, signal exits, real errors, persistent fallback and missing dependencies.
• The isolated Wayland test above also verifies that three repeated dock activations preserve a GTK client's keyboard focus and typed text. It checks the real compiled dock, while the native method tests use controlled stubs.

These checks passed on ARM64, including the composed dock build and all eleven private Wayland test groups. They do not establish the cause or complete repair of every reported floating-dock incident. The owner's running dock remains stopped; this audit does not install a new launcher or re-enable it. Physical session, restart and monitor-transition qualification remains to be done.

Full-height boot choice

The boot helper duplicates the exact running kernel's existing stanza from /boot/grub/custom.cfg, changing only appledrm.show_notch. It retains the kernel, initrd, root/encryption arguments, all original entries and next_entry. It makes mseries-full-height the default on normal boots and preserves an already queued one-shot kernel trial. If a trial is queued, that trial runs first; select the full-height entry from GRUB or use the following normal boot. On 2026-10-18, the owner additionally authorized enabling full height in the already queued .20-enh1 trial itself; that trial and the native layout now share one reboot. This separate trial edit is not undone by the profile's --revert: restore its notch parameter to 0 as well before using stock Wingpanel. The generated grub.cfg, kernel/initramfs, firmware and bootloader binaries are not modified. A missing or ambiguous matching stanza fails before installation. This profile currently targets the transformed J314 install; factory images remain cropped until a compatible native panel and boot profile are installed.

Build, verify, undo

• bash mseries/install-desktop-space.sh --build-only: builds both from pinned source, checks schemas/libraries, installs nothing.
• python3 -m unittest discover -s mseries/display-space -p 'test_*.py': exact boot provenance, encryption retention, idempotence, recovery and refusal tests.
• bash mseries/display-space/test-notch-layout.sh: fetches the pinned Wingpanel source and tests production geometry/GTK allocation under Xvfb, including overflowing controls and fractional scale sizes.
• bash mseries/install-desktop-space.sh --revert: removes the managed boot choice, restores previous explicit/default dock settings, previous private dock build/wrapper and version-matched Wingpanel backup. Log in again/reboot.

The dock schema lives in its private prefix. Only the patched wrapper sets GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR; other applications use their usual settings. Original dock settings/build/wrapper are saved in ${XDG_STATE_HOME:-~/.local/state}/mseries-desktop-space. The first GRUB file backup is /boot/grub/custom.cfg.pre-mseries-full-height; revert removes only this profile's block so later unrelated boot entries survive.

Source and licensing

• Wingpanel: elementary/wingpanel at 6b8ae0453b1fd6dc07bd246642998011f04b2125 (8.0.4 daily base), GPL; modified by mseries/patches/wingpanel-full-height.patch. Existing CodexBar placement and optional clockright ordering remain in the composed build.
• Dock: elementary/dock at 8b45a68a122947ad3a6427bf6e159ec2acf04ad0 (8.3.3), GPL-3.0; modified by mseries/patches/dock-drawers.patch and dock-workspace-startup.patch. The cached DisplayConfig implementation is adapted from the same pinned Wingpanel source, retaining its SPDX header.
• Gala: elementary/gala at f0791434ac40a50f2aec64700a47b3bb04145752 (8.6.2), GPL-3.0-or-later; gala-dock-workarea.patch composes after the existing screen/window corners, dimming and panel-offset patches.
• Physical notch height comes from the J314 device-tree apple,notch-height (74).

ARM64 compilation and simulated GTK allocation do not establish a successful full-height hardware boot. Record the post-reboot clock/popover, dock reveal, placement persistence and monitor switching checks in OS9-HANDOFF.md.

GTK performance rules shared by every app here: GTK-PERFORMANCE-ASAHI.md.