libxkbcommon is a keyboard keymap compiler and support library which processes a reduced subset of keymaps as defined by the XKB (X Keyboard Extension) specification. It also contains a module for handling Compose and dead keys and a separate library for listing available keyboard layouts.

Quick Guide

Introduction to XKB: to learn the essentials of XKB.
User-configuration: instructions to add a custom layout or option.
Quick Guide: introduction on how to use this library.

Building

libxkbcommon is built with Meson:

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build # Run the tests.

To build for use with Wayland, you can disable X11 support while still using the X11 keyboard configuration resource files thusly:

meson setup build \
    -Denable-x11=false \
    -Dxkb-config-root=/usr/share/X11/xkb \
    -Dx-locale-root=/usr/share/X11/locale
meson compile -C build

API

While libxkbcommon's API is somewhat derived from the classic XKB API as found in X11/extensions/XKB.h and friends, it has been substantially reworked to expose fewer internal details to clients.

See the API Documentation.

Dataset

libxkbcommon does not distribute a keymap dataset itself, other than for testing purposes. The most common dataset is xkeyboard-config, which is used by all current distributions for their X11 XKB data. More information on xkeyboard-config is available here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XKeyboardConfig

The dataset for Compose is distributed in libX11, as part of the X locale data.

Relation to X11

See Compatibility notes.

Development

An extremely rudimentary homepage can be found at https://xkbcommon.org

xkbcommon is maintained in git at https://github.com/xkbcommon/libxkbcommon

Patches are always welcome, and may be sent to either xorg-.nosp@m.deve.nosp@m.l@lis.nosp@m.ts.x.nosp@m..org or wayla.nosp@m.nd-d.nosp@m.evel@.nosp@m.list.nosp@m.s.fre.nosp@m.edes.nosp@m.ktop..nosp@m.org or in a GitHub pull request.

Bug reports (and usage questions) are also welcome, and may be filed at GitHub.

The maintainers are

Daniel Stone danie.nosp@m.l@fo.nosp@m.oishb.nosp@m.ar.o.nosp@m.rg
Ran Benita ran@u.nosp@m.nuse.nosp@m.dvar..nosp@m.com

Credits

Many thanks are due to Dan Nicholson for his heroic work in getting xkbcommon off the ground initially.