[Interest] 2017

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On 3 Jan 2017, at 10:37, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday January 3 2017 08:55:13 Shawn Rutledge wrote:
>> Are there obstacles to getting it working without the X server?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean?

Just not sure what you are trying to achieve and why… but you explained more below.

> What I'm doing is the apparently really not supported approach: 
> 
> - build Qt5 as normal on Mac (though patched to include the qgenericunix* stuff)
> - build QtBase configured for XCB (and patched so it works); still using a frameworks build
> - install the xcb qpa plugin and its dependencies, as well as the QtX11Extras component
> - start applications with -platform xcb or using the corresponding env. variable.
> 
> This means I do not have any of the X11 specific stuff in the QtBase component except for X11Extras, and dependent code can be built as usual. The QtCurve style for instance is built without any X11 specific code.
> 
> It probably also answers your question:  I don't need to have the X server running to use Qt5 apps, and everything also works as usual on Mac when I do have the X server running. Evidently I get the expected error when I try to use the xcb QPA and the X server is not running, though on a standard XQuartz set-up the X server would probably be started on-demand.

> BTW, I didn't show it, but with this kind of build the Macintosh application style is available also with the xcb QPA. I rarely use it, but it *is* cool :)
> 
> There is only 1 real issue that I've seen until now: some OpenGL applications lock up on exit with an error message about not releasing a GL context. I don't know if that's a real problem though. Remote displaying doesn't always work as expected either because of XQuartz lacking some key functionality in that domain (both incoming and outgoing), but Qt apps aren't that suitable for remote execution anyway. That *was* a bit my motivation to start tinkering with the xcb  QPA, but I've since discovered that it's very nice for local use, too. Esp. being able to run Konsole on all my desktops.

Why doesn’t it run with just the cocoa plugin?

Does middle-mouse-paste end up interoperating between plain X11 and Qt apps then?

> As a side-note: I've been discussing Wayland on Mac with one of the XQuartz maintainers. He likes the idea, but there's no one working on it right now, and the Wayland libraries depend on a couple of functions that aren't available on Mac (signalfd(), timerfd()).

Hmm, interesting.  But I guess it makes less sense to composite an overlay desktop, as opposed to having application windows which use the Wayland QPA plugin simply showing up as regular windows, right?  Especially if it eventually ends up providing another way of using applications remotely.