Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 6/6] gtk: make default UI

[Roy Tam]

2012/2/20 Stefano Stabellini <address@hidden>:
> On Mon, 20 Feb 2012, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> On 02/20/2012 08:06 AM, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>> > On Mon, 20 Feb 2012, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> >> On 02/19/2012 08:52 PM, Brad Smith wrote:
>> >>> On 19/02/12 9:44 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> >>>> On 02/19/2012 08:24 PM, Brad Smith wrote:
>> >>>>> On 19/02/12 8:10 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> >>>>>>> If not, it will be nice to keep
>> >>>>>>> SDL because GTK huge and not that portable for win32 users.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Neither are true. GTK is a reasonably small dependency especially 
>> >>>>>> given
>> >>>>>> that GLIB is a mandatory dependency. I can't imagine that in terms of
>> >>>>>> binary size, libsdl is much bigger than gtk/gdk.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Double check your facts. That's not even close to being true.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> SDL is a tiny fraction of Gtk+.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Just as an example taking a look at package sizes..
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> 549KB for SDL vs 17.3MB for just Gtk+ and its dependencies (7 
>> >>>>> libraries)
>> >>>>> excluding Glib2 and what it depends on.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I don't see how 17.3MB qualifies as "huge".
>> >>>
>> >>> It's FAR from small not to mention dragging in A LOT of libraries for 
>> >>> what?
>> >>> A prettier looking UI?
>> >>
>> >> An accessible UI that meets the most basic definition of usable.  Sit 
>> >> someone
>> >> down with the SDL interface for the first time, how in the world are they
>> >> supposed to figure out that you hit Ctrl+Alt+2 to get to a command prompt?
>> >
>> > I think that having a GTK UI is quite important for QEMU and having it
>> > be the default is also a good idea.
>> >
>> > BUT we should not deprecate and plan to remove SDL.
>>
>> Actually, I think Cairo can be a better SDL than SDL.
>>
>> It doesn't have the same level of backend support (or input support) as SDL
>> does, but it can render to Win32, Quartz, and a raw X11 window.
>
> Cairo seems to be quite popular and well maintained, however I am not
> sure how well it would work without GTK.
>
> Granted that I don't particularly care about which library we use for
> rendering the "lightweight UI", if the entire UI can be written in
> Cairo, without any other library or dependency of any kind, then it
> is probably OK to replace SDL with Cairo.
>

cairo handles display only, you have to deal with input for each
platform (which is handled by SDL)

>
>> > Do we really want to force everybody that uses QEMU on X11 to compile
>> > the entire set of GTK dependencies?
>> > Keep in mind that QEMU is not just used on Linux distros but it also
>> > used as a component in other projects that might have very different
>> > constraints.
>> > I think that having a lightweight graphical UI with very few and small
>> > dependencies is NOT something we should give up.
>>
>> If we went in a different direction with SDL, I wouldn't mind it so much.  
>> For
>> instance, removing the console emulation and reducing the use of magic 
>> accelerators.
>
> Strictly speaking the console emulation is not part of the SDL UI, also
> we need to keep it because of VNC.
> But I agree that the SDL UI should stay light and simple, rather than
> duplicating the fully featured desktop experience that is going to be
> provided by GTK.