INC-2026-05-22-001: Prevention

What Went Well

  • hyprctl configerrors immediately surfaced all five errors with file and line numbers — no guesswork

  • Prior incident (INC-2026-04-07-002) and codex entry (linux/hyprland/config-debugging) provided a documented triage path

  • Upstream release notes confirmed the breakage was expected and intentional

  • Fix applied in under an hour with zero compositor restarts required beyond the initial reload

What Could Be Improved

  • Pre-upgrade config check: Running hyprctl configerrors before and after pacman -Syu would surface breakage immediately at upgrade time rather than on next login

  • Release note review: Checking Hyprland release notes before upgrading would have flagged the dwindle deprecations in advance

  • Version pinning consideration: For compositor-critical packages on Arch, reviewing changelogs before blind pacman -Syu reduces surprise breakage

Key Takeaways

  • Always run hyprctl configerrors after upgrading Hyprland — config errors may not crash the compositor but will silently break keybinds

  • Dispatchers migrate to layoutmsg — when a standalone dispatcher is removed, check if layoutmsg, <name> is the replacement

  • Arch rolling release = config maintenance — compositor config is not static; upstream deprecations require periodic config updates

  • The codex works — having documented Hyprland debugging in the codex turned a potential multi-hour investigation into a 15-minute triage

  • Not all removals have replacements — splitratio was removed without an equivalent, requiring tracking upstream for a future solution

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