Is XCB ready for production use? Should I use Xlib instead?

Question

If one needs low level access to X11 events, windowing and input without using GTK, QT et al., should one use Xlib or XCB ? What are the pros and cons of each?

Answer 1

You can use both of them. XCB is simpler to use, has a better response to a multithread environment but lacks documentation, while Xlib is a more dated/complex tool, better documented and fully implemented.

I'm currently studying the XCB API and the hardest thing to do is to find docs and good API references..

In the end: if you aim to faster development, you should use Xlib, otherwise XCB is meant to be the future (but it's still far from being such).

Answer 2

What helps when learning XCB is to look at X11 specification, for example here https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.5/doc/x11proto/proto.pdf

Most XCB calls map directly to X11 requests. The same is true for extensions.