xdbe replaced with more generic pixmap based buffering but there are 3 major bugs:
1) main_loop delay is broken or it is getting too many events to process or something because it just runs full speed, so it's using 100% cpu and doing like 20 frames per second instead of going to sleep
2) put code in xdbe_swap_buffers() to clear the back buffer I guess (XFillRectangle) but it's using a solid color so I had to disable that. Now it just makes a blurry mess
3) loading my usual cario / lua script crashes it with BadDrawable passed to X_GetGeometry