Re: Throwing Gtk+ and DirectFB up against the wall to see what sticks:

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 20 June 2013 22:18, Dan Rittersdorf <Dan Rittersdorf dornerworks com> wrote:
 

I have a potential customer with an existing technology base using ilixi and DirectFB, running TimeSys Linux (2.6.x) on an i.MX53 from Freescale. (ARM Cortex A8)

The customer wants to develop a new product based on this platform, but wants the additional capabilities of Gtk+ 3.8.x without losing the advantages of DirectFB 1.6.3.

 

I know Gtk+ and DirectFB have been divorced for a few years, but Cairo still has some support for DirectFB, and Gtk uses Cairo…

 

The customer wants to restore the old Gtk on DirectFB capability.

 

Can anyone please describe your impression of why Gtk+ doesn’t support interaction with DirectFB today and what challenges you see in reconciling these products today?

it's not really necessary for me to "describe an impression": the reason why DFB was dropped from the supported backends is exactly because every single person that expressed interest in working on it was doing so because "a customer" wanted to use gtk with directfb. the main issue with that approach (which, on its face, is perfectly valid) is that: a) "customers" using DFB ship with a specific version every 5 years, and thus b) nobody sticks around to ensure that the backend keeps working on a release cycle basis.

simply put: the directfb is the ugly, red-headed stepchild that nobody cares about until somebody lands a contract to support it for a product that usually never gets an update. in the meantime, gtk upstream moves on, changes internals, and stuff breaks because nobody gets paid to care. we barely have people working on the MacOS and the Windows backend; adding an unmaintained backend won't *ever* be an option.

if I may sound bitter, it's because I am.

for more information the whys and wherefores, as well as what I consider *minimal* requirements for even considering a directfb backend back in GDK, feel free to read this thread: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2010-September/msg00076.html

finally, and to be absolutely blunt, I think that directfb should not be used for anything that is not maintaining a legacy product or application. x11 works perfectly fine on embedded devices — and has been working fine for the past 10 years — and if you want to use something that takes advantage of modern embedded hardware, Wayland is most likely the best choice moving forward.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

--
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/