DirectFB2 Is Modernizing DirectFB With Meson, Modularizing The Sources

DirectFB2 is in development with work on it having started last year after the original DirectFB project ceased development a half-decade ago. While more embedded/mobile platforms have moved on from DirectFB and now targeting Wayland, DirectFB2 hopes to restore its viability for embedded systems.

As covered last month, DirectFB2 development was started last year in an effort to revive DirectFB. DirectFB2 exposes the DirectFB API but various modernization efforts are underway. Nicolas Caramelli who has been developing DirectFB2 presented at FOSDEM 2022 last weekend on the effort.

Among the modernization work he is pursuing is moving DirectFB2 to the popular Meson build system, eliminating external dependencies except for libc and fluxcomp, and modularizing the project by splitting up the original DirectFB sources. For now DirectFB2 only supports Linux but the hope is to extend it to supporting other embedded operating systems moving forward.

DirectFB2 is successfully running DirectFB code samples as well as having basic OpenGL and Vulkan rendering support.

Embedded developers and those just curious about DirectFB2 can learn more about the effort via the FOSDEM.org presentation with the slides and videos now available. Additional information on this open-source project can be found via GitHub.