Steven Harms » development

Xorg / X11 programming update

sharms — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:25:07 +0000

So I have been looking into Xorg development. I posted about it a few months ago, but little to no help came of asking where to start looking. After asking several places without any useful help, I actually found a great book:

However, in my haste to order that one, I ordered 2 of these:

So if you are looking to get started with X11 / Xlib / Xorg these are handy to have around. Since I have 2 copies of the pink reference manual, if you want one, ~~email me at sharms at ubuntu period com and I will send you my extra copy for free.~~ Or if you want I can bring it to Ohio Linux Fest 2009 and give it to you there.

Update: Book claimed already

Finding the difference between two files

Steven Harms — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:39:34 +0000

Ever need to find what you changed between two files or directories? The universal way to find these differences is to use the ‘diff’ command. The diff command is used by most open source projects, and people use it to communicate their changes / bug fixes etc.

Console using diff

Sometimes I find the diff command to be boring. Much like my terminal prompt, I like consoles to have color. The color helps me figure out what is going on a bit quicker. Do get diffs in color, you can ‘sudo apt-get install colordiff’. The resulting output will look like this instead:

Console with color diff

But there are some people out there who just don’t like consoles / terminals for one reason or another. There is also a GUI based diff tool called meld. You can install meld by running ‘sudo apt-get install meld’. Your diff will now look like this:

Screenshot of meld

That is a brief overview of the tools I have found useful, using screenshots.

Getting started with Xorg development

Steven Harms — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:45:06 +0000

I am doing some work with thin clients, so I wanted to figure out if there is a way I can replicate what I saw in a kvm demo video (Live migration while the client was playing an HD video). I believe they are using a version of the RDP protocol.

I would like to implement an open source alternative, and I figure that starts with Xorg as the protocol itself isn’t optimal for video apps over the network. So like anyone else, I went and did a git clone of the repo.

The question I have now is: is the best way to learn about how it works to just read the source over and over? The xorg wiki is devoid of most details, and the branch I was looking at (dmx-2) is pretty sparse when it comes to comments. Suggestions?