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Stage 8c — Reproducible Linux CI

This maintenance stage makes the GitHub Actions build reproduce the native Linux prerequisites already required by the workspace.

Concept

Cargo manages Rust packages, but some crates bind to libraries supplied by the operating system. Patin enables smithay-client-toolkit’s xkbcommon feature, so SCTK’s build script asks pkg-config for xkbcommon. The optional patin-lock workspace member also links to PAM. A fresh Ubuntu GitHub runner does not promise the corresponding development files.

Development packages are different from runtime packages: they install the headers, unversioned linker inputs, and .pc metadata needed while compiling. On Debian and Ubuntu those packages are libxkbcommon-dev and libpam0g-dev. Installing them before Cargo runs prevents the SCTK build script from panicking because xkbcommon.pc cannot be found and prepares the complete workspace for the later lock-screen build.

Implementation

  • .github/workflows/ci.yml installs the two native development packages immediately after checkout.
  • README.md names the packages beside the build commands so a fresh local Debian/Ubuntu checkout has the same prerequisites as CI.
  • docs/environment.md explains the pkg-config discovery mechanism and the matching environment setup.
  • docs/SUMMARY.md links this stage into the book.

No Rust behavior, Wayland protocol handling, or runtime capability detection changes in this stage.

Verification

The following checks were run after the change:

  • cargo fmt --all -- --check — passed.
  • cargo test --workspace --all-targets — passed all 29 tests across the toolkit, examples, and workspace binaries/libraries.
  • cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings — passed with no warnings.
  • mdbook build — passed and wrote the HTML book to book/.
  • git diff --check — passed with no whitespace errors.

GitHub’s hosted runner will exercise the newly added apt-get step on the next push or pull request; the local machine already had the development libraries, so no privileged package installation was needed for these checks.