latchd/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

0.1.0 — Unreleased

first public release

What's In

• tui login screen with username/password fields, session switcher, and status messages
• supports x11, wayland, and tty sessions
• pam authentication via cgo (thread-locked for safety)
• faillock integration — detects lockouts, shows remaining attempts, admin bypass via ctrl+u
• conway's game of life background rendered at 30 fps with unicode half-block characters
• spring animation on switcher transitions
• shake animation on failed login
• caps lock indicator via ioctl
• configurable power controls (shutdown/reboot on f1/f2 by default)
• toml configuration with $VARIABLE substitution
• preview mode (--preview) to test the login screen without leaving your session
• utmpx user accounting (glibc only)
• x11 session setup — xauthority cookies, sigusr1 handshake, server timeout
• privilege dropping for child processes
• log piping with 64 mb cap

Recent Fixes

• utmpx time field portability — replaced hardcoded C.__uint32_t / C.__int32_t casts with a C helper function (auth/utmpx_time.h) that lets the compiler handle type conversion. fixes build failure on systems where ut_tv uses struct timeval instead of the 32/64 compat struct
• cgo pointer safety for pam — replaced unsafe.Pointer(&h) (Go stack pointer passed to C) with storeHandle/loadHandle helpers that keep the cgo.Handle in C-heap memory. fixes cgo argument has Go pointer to unpinned Go pointer panic on Go 1.22+
• pam conversation callback — fixed unsafe.Slice using &r (pointer-to-pointer) as the backing array instead of r (the calloc'd response array), which wrote password bytes into random stack memory. also now only responds to PAM_PROMPT_ECHO_OFF/PAM_PROMPT_ECHO_ON messages — info and error messages get nil. fixes pam_unix: auth could not identify password
• cgo handle lifecycle — moved cgo.Handle and its C-heap backing from Validate (where they were defer-freed on return) into the Credentials struct so they stay alive through OpenSession and until CloseSession. fixes misuse of an invalid Handle panic
• session spawning — replaced the broken ForkExec (which relaunched the same binary with made-up flags) with a direct session.Spawn call that drops privileges and runs the desktop in-process. fixes flag provided but not defined: -user
• renamed extra/ files — lemurs.pam → latchd.pam, lemurs.service → latchd.service
• readme credits — added a credits section acknowledging lemurs for the extra/ directory structure and session scanning approach
• makefile enable and update targets — make enable stops any running DM, disables the aliased display-manager, and enables latchd. make update runs uninstall → git pull → reinstall in one command
• missing extra/ directory — added extra/config.toml, extra/xsetup.sh, extra/lemurs.pam, and extra/lemurs.service so make install can find them
• makefile deps target — added make deps to automatically install libpam0g-dev and build-essential, and verify go is present
• readme overhaul — rewrote for clarity: added "what problem does this solve", "how it works", known issues, simpler install instructions, and proper dependency listing
• view cleanup — removed the non-functional automata background overlay from View() (the Frame() was never called, and the black-space placeholder caused EEEE garbage characters on some terminals). also removed a hardcoded 80-char width on the top bar so it adapts to the terminal

What's Missing

• no tests
• session leader is the latchd process, not the desktop — pam session tracking via systemd-logind may be imperfect
• not all config options affect the rendering yet
• occasional terminal state corruption on abrupt exit
• automata background rendered as tick-only visual (not wired into the view yet)