GTK fe: DFB abandoned, switching to X
Hi everybody
yesterday i've done a lot of cross-testing and debugging to discover the
causes of the strange crashes of the gtk-dfb frontend, the result is
that cdebconf is not guilty, the cause is the gdk layer for dfb.
The gdk for dfb is buggy and is not manteined from a long time (~ two
years) and has so many bugs that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to develop
something over it.
Things get worse if we consider the gdk-fb: it doesn't even compile and
is unmantained from long time too.
The only reliable gdk layer actually available is the X11-gdx, so i've
recompiled the gtk fe for X and created a test-case similar to the one
previoulsly developed for dfb, used my home pc as an Xserver, launched
the gtk frontend and magically all those nasty bugs (memory corruption,
broken pointer, unexplicable crashes) disappeared.
So, starting from now, i'll switch to X for the development of the
frontend (i'll post the link to the appropriate testcase very soon); if
someday someone should fix the gdk-dfb there should be no problems in
switching to it.
If we should instead decide to stay with X we'll need to re-insert mice
suport in 2.6 kernel and to create an udeb with all the needed libraries
and a small X server.
The options are
-X11: solid rock, but needs to be cutted down for space reasons
-Kdrive: small, but unmanteined since 2003
I would like to know what do you think about it.
ciao
Attilio
Reply to: