wlptrctl-zig

A Wayland virtual-pointer daemon and CLI client, written in Zig 0.16.

Emits pointer events (motion, scroll, button, click) on wlroots-based compositors via the zwlr_virtual_pointer_v1 protocol. A long-running daemon binds a Unix datagram socket; a short-lived CLI sends commands.

This is a Zig port of wlptrctl (Rust). The two can coexist — they use different socket names.

Requirements

• Zig 0.16.0
• libwayland-client and wayland-scanner (Arch: wayland)
• A wlroots compositor (sway, Hyprland, river, ...)

Build

zig build
zig build test

The binary lands at zig-out/bin/wlptrctl.

Usage

wlptrctl daemon
wlptrctl move <dx> <dy>
wlptrctl scroll <vertical> <horizontal>
wlptrctl button <left|right|middle|NUM> <press|release|click>

Run the daemon in one terminal, then send commands from another:

wlptrctl move 100 0
wlptrctl scroll 1 0
wlptrctl button left click
wlptrctl button 274 press
wlptrctl button 274 release

SIGINT/SIGTERM shuts the daemon down and removes the socket.

IPC

The daemon listens on $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/wlptrctl-zig.sock (AF_UNIX, SOCK_DGRAM). Each datagram is a fixed-size little-endian frame:

Command	Layout	Size
Scroll	0x00 i32 vertical i32 horizontal	9
Motion	0x01 i32 dx i32 dy	9
Button	0x02 u32 button u32 state	9
Click	0x03 u32 button	5

state is 0 (released) or 1 (pressed). Button numbers follow Linux input event codes (left=0x110, right=0x111, middle=0x112).

Layout

build.zig                  wayland-scanner + link wayland-client
protocols/                 vendored wlr-virtual-pointer XML
src/main.zig               entry point
src/cli.zig                arg parsing
src/ipc.zig                wire format + socket path
src/client.zig             sendto over AF_UNIX/SOCK_DGRAM
src/daemon.zig             bind, signal handling, recv loop
src/wayland.zig            @cImport wrapper, Pointer emit functions