SDL 2.0.2 Released With Mir & Wayland Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SDL 2.0.2 Released With Mir & Wayland Support

As some other exciting Linux gaming news this morning besides Valve open-sourcing their Direct3D to OpenGL translation layer and Crytek publicly confirming their Linux CryEngine port, the open-source community is out this week with SDL 2.0.2...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTYyNjU

[blackout23]

Arch Linux ships sdl2 with --enable-video-wayland for easier experementation. Otherwise you have to build it yourself and specifically enable it.

[turol]

They also broke OpenGL on Mac OS X 10.6 so 2.0.3 release is imminent.

[paintbynumbers]

I did not see it in the changelog but I believe the 2.0.2 release also included the "Dynamic API magic" that let's you replace libSDL functionality even when it is static linking was used.

[toka]

Wha is mir?

Currently the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_%28software%29 claism, mir is just another display server, such as X.Org Server, or XFree86, but protocol agnostic.

If that is the case, why is there a need for special mir support, such as there is a need for X11 or Wayland support, both being protocols for display servers?

Is it possible, that mir is not only a display server, but also a display server protocol competing with Wayland?

[toka]

What is mir?

Is mir just a display server, or is mir also a display server protocol?

Why is there a need for patches to gein mir-support, like there is one for wayland-support?

[toka]

Isn't there Video Codec Engine support in Linux?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Codec_Engine is for encoding bitstreams, while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder is for decoding a certain range of codecs entirely by this SIP. Isn't that better that a quad-code CPU or a second graphics card?

[Pajn]

Is mir just a display server, or is mir also a display server protocol?

Why is there a need for patches to gein mir-support, like there is one for wayland-support?

Mir only provides a library, no protocol.
Well, software isn't driven by magic so if you want to support something you'll have to add support.

[tuke81]

I did not see it in the changelog but I believe the 2.0.2 release also included the "Dynamic API magic" that let's you replace libSDL functionality even when it is static linking was used.

$ cat WhatsNew.txt 

This is a list of major changes in SDL's version history.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.2:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
General:
* Added SDL_GL_ResetAttributes() to reset OpenGL attributes to default values
* Added an API to load a database of game controller mappings from a file:
    SDL_GameControllerAddMappingsFromFile(), SDL_GameControllerAddMappingsFromRW()
* Added game controller mappings for the PS4 and OUYA controllers
* Added SDL_GetDefaultAssertionHandler() and SDL_GetAssertionHandler()
* Added SDL_DetachThread()
* Added SDL_HasAVX() to determine if the CPU has AVX features
* Added SDL_vsscanf(), SDL_acos(), and SDL_asin() to the stdlib routines
* EGL can now create/manage OpenGL and OpenGL ES 1.x/2.x contexts, and share
  them using SDL_GL_SHARE_WITH_CURRENT_CONTEXT
* Added a field "clicks" to the mouse button event which records whether the event is a single click, double click, etc.
* The screensaver is now disabled by default, and there is a hint SDL_HINT_VIDEO_ALLOW_SCREENSAVER that can change that behavior.
* Added a hint SDL_HINT_MOUSE_RELATIVE_MODE_WARP to specify whether mouse relative mode should be emulated using mouse warping.
* testgl2 does not need to link with libGL anymore
* Added testgles2 test program to demonstrate working with OpenGL ES 2.0
* Added controllermap test program to visually map a game controller

Windows:
* Support for OpenGL ES 2.x contexts using either WGL or EGL (natively via
  the driver or emulated through ANGLE)
* Added a hint SDL_HINT_VIDEO_WIN_D3DCOMPILER to specify which D3D shader compiler to use for OpenGL ES 2 support through ANGLE
* Added a hint SDL_HINT_VIDEO_WINDOW_SHARE_PIXEL_FORMAT that is useful when creating multiple windows that should share the same OpenGL context.
* Added an event SDL_RENDER_TARGETS_RESET that is sent when D3D9 render targets are reset after the device has been restored.

Mac OS X:
* Added a hint SDL_HINT_MAC_CTRL_CLICK_EMULATE_RIGHT_CLICK to control whether Ctrl+click should be treated as a right click on Mac OS X. This is off by default.

Linux:
* Fixed fullscreen and focused behavior when receiving NotifyGrab events
* Added experimental Wayland and Mir support, disabled by default

Android:
* Joystick support (minimum SDK version required to build SDL is now 12, 
  the required runtime version remains at 10, but on such devices joystick 
  support won't be available).
* Hotplugging support for joysticks
* Added a hint SDL_HINT_ACCELEROMETER_AS_JOYSTICK to control whether the accelerometer should be listed as a 3 axis joystick, which it will by default.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.1:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

General:
* Added an API to get common filesystem paths in SDL_filesystem.h:
    SDL_GetBasePath(), SDL_GetPrefPath()
* Added an API to do optimized YV12 and IYUV texture updates:
    SDL_UpdateYUVTexture()
* Added an API to get the amount of RAM on the system:
    SDL_GetSystemRAM()
* Added a macro to perform timestamp comparisons with SDL_GetTicks():
    SDL_TICKS_PASSED()
* Dramatically improved OpenGL ES 2.0 rendering performance
* Added OpenGL attribute SDL_GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB_CAPABLE

Windows:
* Created a static library configuration for the Visual Studio 2010 project
* Added a hint to create the Direct3D device with support for multi-threading:
    SDL_HINT_RENDER_DIRECT3D_THREADSAFE
* Added a function to get the D3D9 adapter index for a display:
    SDL_Direct3D9GetAdapterIndex()
* Added a function to get the D3D9 device for a D3D9 renderer:
    SDL_RenderGetD3D9Device()
* Fixed building SDL with the mingw32 toolchain (mingw-w64 is preferred)
* Fixed crash when using two XInput controllers at the same time
* Fixed detecting a mixture of XInput and DirectInput controllers
* Fixed clearing a D3D render target larger than the window
* Improved support for format specifiers in SDL_snprintf()

Mac OS X:
* Added support for retina displays:
  Create your window with the SDL_WINDOW_ALLOW_HIGHDPI flag, and then use SDL_GL_GetDrawableSize() to find the actual drawable size. You are responsible for scaling mouse and drawing coordinates appropriately.
* Fixed mouse warping in fullscreen mode
* Right mouse click is emulated by holding the Ctrl key while left clicking

Linux:
* Fixed float audio support with the PulseAudio driver
* Fixed missing line endpoints in the OpenGL renderer on some drivers
* X11 symbols are no longer defined to avoid collisions when linking statically

iOS:
* Fixed status bar visibility on iOS 7
* Flipped the accelerometer Y axis to match expected values

Android:
IMPORTANT: You MUST get the updated SDLActivity.java to match C code
* Moved EGL initialization to native code 
* Fixed the accelerometer axis rotation relative to the device rotation
* Fixed race conditions when handling the EGL context on pause/resume
* Touch devices are available for enumeration immediately after init

Raspberry Pi:
* Added support for the Raspberry Pi, see README-raspberrypi.txt for details

[erendorn]

Is mir just a display server, or is mir also a display server protocol?

Why is there a need for patches to gein mir-support, like there is one for wayland-support?

Mir is a display server does not use a defined protocol. As with any display server you still need to talk to it, in the case of Mir this is done through API calls.