Introduction

The X protocol C-language Binding (XCB) is a replacement for Xlib featuring a small footprint, latency hiding, direct access to the protocol, improved threading support, and extensibility.

Download

• You can obtain released versions of XCB from http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist.
• Follow the instructions from the DevelopersGuide to build, except that you can use released versions of the dependencies, and you don't need git, automake, autoconf, or libtool.

Development

• If you wish to work on XCB, please read the DevelopersGuide.
• Mailing list: Discussion of XCB and Xlib/XCB is through the XCB mailing list.
• IRC: XCB developers also hang out on IRC, and have occasional meetings.
• Of course, there's still a lot to do .

Documentation

• The XcbApi is documented. There is also a tutorial and some random notes.
• XCB is built atop an XML description of the X core protocol and common extension protocols called XML/XCB. This protocol can be used in other interesting ways.
• To aid in porting applications, you can configure Xlib to use XCB for the transport layer. We call this Xlib/XCB.

Miscellaneous

The XCB project has a long history, during which it has produced many academic publications. XCB has, of yet, seen limited adoption.