Libinput is done

[Posted July 27, 2016 by n8willis]

At his blog, libinput maintainer Peter Hutterer announced that with the recent version 1.4 release, the libinput team has "now finished the TODO list we had when libinput was first conceived." In addition to marking that occasion with a clickbait headline, Hutterer goes on to review the full libinput feature set and its impact on other system components like display managers. "The hard work doesn't stop of course, there are still plenty of areas where we need to be better. And of course, new features come as HW manufacturers bring out new hardware. I already have touch arbitration on my todo list. But it's nice to wave at this big milestone as we pass it into the way to the glorious future of perfect, bug-free input." Hutterer also takes time to thank a long list of libinput contributors for their work.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 14:13 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (11 responses)

So, is it possible to write a gpm-replacement based on libinput ?

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 20:54 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (10 responses)

Unfortunately it does not seems the libinput API is documented beyond the doxygen output which is not useful, so the answer is probably no.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 22:48 UTC (Thu) by whot (subscriber, #50317) [Link] (9 responses)

what documentation do you need beyond the API docs?

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 29, 2016 15:33 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (8 responses)

To start with, a minimal example of a program using the library.

The problem is that the documentation just lists functions without the relationship between them.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 29, 2016 21:33 UTC (Fri) by whot (subscriber, #50317) [Link] (7 responses)

in the libinput repo there are tools/event-debug.c (commandline tool) and tools/event-gui.c. (a GTK debug tool). Plus there's the xf86-input-libinput X.Org driver which is an example of using libinput inside a device management system that has other approaches than libinput (device discovery and fd handling is a bit weird and overly complicated). With those three you should be able to get started.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 30, 2016 18:42 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (6 responses)

tools/event-debug.c sure is useful but there is no instructions how to compile it in a stand-alone way (i.e. outside the libinput directory).

I means, I think I will manage, but it really feel like it was intended that only libinput developers would write libinput programs.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 30, 2016 21:36 UTC (Sat) by whot (subscriber, #50317) [Link] (4 responses)

libinput provides a pkgconfig file which is pretty standard for libraries these days. If you don't use that, you'll have to assemble the makeflags/includes yourself but even that shouldn't be much of an issue.

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 31, 2016 15:10 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

True, but this is not sufficient to compile tools/event-debug.c, so it does not serve as an example file.

Libinput is done

Posted Aug 1, 2016 3:56 UTC (Mon) by whot (subscriber, #50317) [Link] (2 responses)

I've pushed updated basic documentation to the frontpage of:
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/index...

Libinput is done

Posted Aug 1, 2016 12:42 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

Excellent!
If you want an example of proper library documentation I suggest this one
<http://gegl.org/> from a recent LWN item.

Libinput is done

Posted Aug 1, 2016 23:58 UTC (Mon) by whot (subscriber, #50317) [Link]

thanks, I'll have a look.

note that libinput is a bit special, it's not a generic library that we expect applications to use. there is a very limited number of expected libinput users (most Wayland compositors and the xorg driver) and a few others like research projects and PoCs. but compared to gegl it's not a generic user-facing library, so the documentation requirements are a bit different (i.e. we can ignore most of the entry-level stuff)

Libinput is done

Posted Aug 7, 2016 9:40 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Yes I managed! Release 0.0.0 of my project is at <https://alioth.debian.org/projects/consolation/>.
Thanks for your encouragement!
Outside the doc issues, libinput is great!

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 18:14 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

It sounds like it's at the point where I can reasonably swap out xf86-input-{evdev,wacom,synaptics} for the libinput driver. I'll give that a try soon, while I can afford to risk breaking everything :)

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 21:08 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

FWIW, I've been using it for at least 2 years, wouldn't be surprised if it were 4 years, now without issue :) .

Libinput is done

Posted Jul 28, 2016 23:09 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Well I did the stupid thing: installed it, threw out old xorg.conf.d lines, and uninstalled all the other drivers all at once. It worked first time and the only change I can see is mouse acceleration, but that doesn't bother me.

Works fine with my normal tablet, but libinput-debug-events gives me interesting output for another one (USB ID 5543:0005):

libinput error: libinput bug: Device 'UC-LOGIC Tablet WP8060U Pen' does not meet tablet criteria. Ignoring this device.

IIRC this thing has shown no sign of life every other time I've tried to get it working, so even the fact libinput's trying is an improvement.