The AppImage came up blank on CachyOS with `Could not create default EGL
display: EGL_BAD_PARAMETER. Aborting...`, and the DMA-BUF workaround already
in `main.rs` did not help — verified by finding the flag compiled into the
shipped 0.4.19 binary, where it runs unconditionally on Linux.
It is a different fault with the same error text. linuxdeploy bundles
`libwayland-client.so.0` as a GTK dependency and `AppRun.wrapped` puts the
bundled directory ahead of the host's, so the host's Mesa resolves against our
copy. `libEGL.so.1` carries a hard DT_NEEDED on that library, which is why
`GDK_BACKEND=x11` does not dodge it: the loader must resolve those symbols
before libEGL loads at all.
Bisected on the reporter's machine against the released artifact — removing
`libwayland-client.so.0` from the AppDir cleared the abort, while removing
`libwayland-egl` or `libepoxy` did not. The bundled copy (Ubuntu 22.04,
wayland 1.20) is missing eleven symbols their wayland 1.26 exports, including
`wl_proxy_get_display`, `wl_proxy_get_queue`,
`wl_display_create_queue_with_name` and `wl_fixes_interface`.
Bundling a newer wayland would defer this, not fix it: the floor is set by the
host's Mesa, which updates independently of our releases, so any version we
pick is one release away from being too old again. This is a host-coupled
library like libGL and libdrm — the only correct version is the host's.
So the copy is demoted rather than deleted. It moves off the loader path into
`usr/lib/wayland-fallback`, and a hook adds that directory back only when the
host has no libwayland-client of its own — so a host without one still starts.
The ordering is safe because `AppRun.wrapped` appends the inherited
LD_LIBRARY_PATH after its own entries, making the hook a fallback and never an
override. AppRun sources hooks by name rather than globbing, so it is patched
to source this one.
Verified against the real 0.4.19 artifact rather than a synthetic AppDir: it
repacks, the binary and AppRun survive, and both hook branches were exercised
— host-has-it leaves LD_LIBRARY_PATH untouched, and a debian:12-slim container
with no wayland at all engages the fallback.
The comment in `main.rs` quoted this exact error as one the DMA-BUF flag
fixes. That claim sent this investigation down the wrong path first, so it is
corrected rather than left to do it again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011YPqHpjV4EL6RNEwrRKqQm
