[directfb-users] Re: Questions about DirectFB Readme

[Ville Syrjälä <syrjala@sci.fi>]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 07:52:16PM +0200, Otto Wyss wrote:
> Reading through the Readme of DirectFB gave me the following questions:
> 
> 1. Build requirements (dependent packages):
>   - freetype (version >= 2.0.1)
>   - libjpeg62
>   - libpng2 or libpng3
>   - zlib
> Could anybody give a short description why these packages are needed?
> The Debian libdirectfb package doesn't mention freetype, what is
> correct? Current Debian libpng package is libpng12 and zlib1g.

freetype is required for the ft2 font provider. It's not strictly 
necessary but highly recommended. Without it DirectFB apps can only use 
one compiled in font.

libjpeg, libpng are used by the image providers. Again they aren't 
strictly necessary but without them DirectFB apps can't access jpeg and 
png images.

> 2. The Readme mentions the following access rights
>   crw-rw----    1 root     tty       29,   0  /dev/fb0

This is required.

>   crw-rw----    1 root     tty       10,   1  /dev/psaux

Only needed if you use the ps2mouse input driver.

>   crw-rw----    1 root     tty        4,   0  /dev/tty0

It's required by the vt code.

> Are they still needed? Besides even with 
>   crw-------    1 root     tty        4,   0  /dev/tty0
> I can "cat /dev/tty0" as a normal user while I get an access denied with
> "cat /dev/psaux". Is this normal?

I don't think so. At least it doesn't work on my system.

> 3. Kernel tmpfs
>   mount tmpfs /dev/shm -ttmpfs
> Is this really needed? Why?

It's used for shared memory. You only need it if you use the multi-app 
core. Most distros already have it mounted since other apps/libs might use 
it too.

-- 
Ville Syrjälä
syrjala@sci.fi
http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/