Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Add QEMU DirectFB display driver

[Alexander Graf]

On 17.05.2010, at 23:45, malc wrote:

> On Mon, 17 May 2010, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> 
>> On 05/17/2010 04:35 PM, malc wrote:
>>> There's one thing that SDL does marvelously well - it's just one fairly
>>> small and self contained library that doesn't unleash dependency hell on
>>> the user.
>>> 
>>>> The fact that we have cocoa support in the tree is basically an admission
>>>> of
>>>> failure with SDL.
>>>> 
>>> I don't think so, the way i see it: someone had an itch (i.e. an
>>> application that does not integrate well with his windowing environment)
>>> and he scratched it.
>>> 
>> 
>> SDL doesn't integrate well into a modern Gnome desktop either.  I don't see
>> why we have Cocoa and not Gtk.  If the answer is, someone needs to send
>> patches, expect patches soon :-)
>> 
> 
> If those patches don't try to force Gnome on me (by removing SDL that is
> and being optional) let them come.

I'm trying to think of a project where the clean separation between multiple 
video outputs implemented in the backend and a separate frontend worked out. So 
far the only case that has a strikingly similar architecture coming to my mind 
is mplayer. And I wouldn't call mplayer's GUI story a huge success.

In fact, couldn't we rather keep all graphic output out of qemu and just expose 
VNC, possibly with self-made additions to the protocol to speed up local 
rendering (thinking an SHM extension here)? Then we could still offer a 
separate SDL based viewer that could do the same things it does now. But we'd 
also open up the gate for a whole new integration level with possible GUIs.


Alex