Currently, we only support wl_surface version 3, which doesn't have the damage_buffer request, which were added in wl_surface version 4.

According to the wayland protocol documentation, "damage_buffer" is preferred over "damage", the only difference between the two, is that damage_buffer sends damage in wl_buffer coordinates (that is unscaled), rather than wl_surface coordinates (scaled by buffer_scale and potentially wp_viewport).

One of the reasons to implement this, is that Mesa doesn't send partial updates when the compositor only supports damage, and not damage_buffer. So implementing this is required for partial updates to work on Mesa—and possibly on other platforms.

wl_surface is constructed through wl_compositor.create_surface, so this also requires updating wl_compositor to version 4. Fortunately, wl_surface is the only interface that wl_compositor returns that got updated between version 3 and 4, and the only thing that changed in that interface, was the addition of the damage_buffer request, so implementing this should be as straightforward as simply bumping the minimum versions an implementing this single request.