GDK indirect rendering backend online
I just finished touching up that GDK backend for rendering toplevel windows to Cairo image surfaces I briefly presented at GUADEC. It now compiles with the latest GTK+ trunk, and it even has a page with instructions for how to check it out and build it. There are some examples too.
With time, I can hopefully get this to production quality levels.
What’s the relationship between this project and these videos that were posted back in December? Why are you just now blogging about it in August if it was possible last year?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOpkfOVptlw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8NoZ041RPA
Without knowing more about this patch, does this mean you can run GTK+ code without having an X server running ? Would this mean it could be used for running unit tests/introspection on a codebase without needing Xvfb ?
Nick: First, the offscreen rendering you mention was only available as a patch, which was partly merged in a few weeks ago. Second, it still requires the X11 server (or equivalent) to do the rendering. Mine is a different approach, doing all the rendering on the application side, in client memory.
Thomas: Yes!
What is the current status of this? The reason I am asking is, that I just bought a new shiny televison that has a linux running in its firmware and a network connection. I am looking into making some GTK programs available on it and since it already uses SDL for the rendering your Indirect Renderer could be an almost effortless approach to achieve this…
I would be perfectly willing to help with the advancement of GKT+ Indirect Renderer and might even be able to recruit a few other interested parties - namely from the group using those televisions as well *wink*
Frank: It hasn’t changed much since I posted it, which means it won’t be useful without a bit of work. However, I just gave the repo an overhaul and made sure it built against GTK+ 2.16 (with a port to GTK+ 2.18 still in progress).
If you’re still interested, check out the updated instructions on the wiki page. I don’t have lots of time these days, but I can assist and answer questions on e-mail.
Hans,
I already checked it out the day I posted my question (using the “fast” approach, since I suspected, that it would not compile against the current git-version of gtk+) and with a bit of work I was able to compile everything and get the demo running - kind of anyway. *grin*
I’ll give the overhauled code a try and see how long it will take me to dig into it to get a basic understanding.
I know where to find you, when I have questions I can’t answer for myself!
Thanks!
Whatever happened to this work? It seems like it would fit in well with the new device-independence of GDK3–and the wayland backend looks like it has many of the same ideas–but I’m looking just to render GTK3 apps to a cairo surface, not embed a whole wayland compositor. Any suggestions?
C. Scott: The work is still there, but it won’t carry over to GTK3 without a significant effort. I think if I were to bring it up to date now, I’d start from scratch, using the old backend as a reference.
The good news is that with GTK3, it should be easier than ever, since they’ve cleaned up the backend interface and added support for switching backends at runtime.