Inputfd Still Being Worked On For Direct Input Access Under Wayland

Written by Michael Larabel in Wayland on 23 August 2017 at 06:22 AM EDT. 8 Comments
WAYLAND
It has been several months since last hearing anything about inputfd, the proposed direct input access protocol for Wayland. This protocol extension would make it to be able to better support different gaming devices under Wayland, among other use-cases.

The proposed inputfd protocol extension allows direct access to input devices with the Wayland compositor passing the file descriptor of the device to the requested client. This would avoid libinput needing to support all of these different types of input devices/peripherals, particularly for all the different gaming controllers. With the compositor handling the FD setup and passing, the client doesn't need any special privileges. Joysticks/gamepads, 3D mice, VR input devices, and more are among the possible devices for use by inputfd.

This morning Peter Hutterer sent out his third version of this proposed protocol. Developers wishing to learn more can see the proposed Wayland protocol via wayland-devel.
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