I'm looking at add in a vnc server and client to the book.
I've looked at tightvnc, but that seems to require sources from xfree86
so I'm not going to use that.
I've looked at x11vnc. It seems to be fairly easy to build, but there
are some deficiencies. First of all, it is only a server. A client
needs to be created also. Secondly, it attaches to a real X11 display.
To me this is a limitation as I've used vnc before in headless
systems. What is needed, in my opinion, is the ability to create a
virtual X11 display and then let one or more users connect to that in a
shared environment for collaboration.
Finally, I've looked at tigervnc. It seems to offer a client and two
servers: one server that works in a virtual X11 environment and one that
connects it a real X11 display. It also offers a vnc client.
The build of tigervnc is a bit unusual in that it wants to download
sources from network. It also requires a library, fltk, and then
patches that library before build.
So here are a few of the issues:
1. Where do we put these packages in the book? The fltk library (FLTK
(pronounced "fulltick") is a cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit for
UNIX®/Linux® (X11), Microsoft® Windows®, and MacOS® X. ) could go in
Chapter 10, Graphics and Font Libraries, but it requires customization
from the tigervnc site:
apply_patch()
{
rm -f $2
wget http://www.fltk.org/strfiles/$1/$2
patch -p1 < $2
}
apply_patch 2599 fltk-1_v4.3.x-keyboard-x11.patch
...
The tigervnc documentation calls for 13 patches. This leads to issue 2:
2. Do we just put in instructions like the above or patch everything
and create out own consolidated patch?
3. Where do the instructions for tigervnc go? It could possibly go in
Chapter 38. Other X-based Programs, it could be it's own chapter like
Chapter 8. Virtualization or even go into Chapter 8 itself (a bit of a
stretch but I could live with it).
4. fltk by default installs man pages in man/cat{1,3}. Nothing else in
BLFS does that, but it works fine. The packages does have files such as
fltk-config.man, but would require manual installation to install at
man1/fltk-config.1 (or hacking the Makefile). What's preferable here?
Going back to issue 1, I could put both fltk and tigervnc procedures on
the same page. We do a slightly similar thing in the Xorg drivers
section. Is that reasonable?
Going back to issue 2, tightvnc also downloads xorg sources at a
specific version. Should we make a tarball for that? There is a python
script named `download-xorg-7.5` that gets the versions of about 44
packages that we already built in Xorg.
I'll note that I think that tightvnc is NOT dependent on our build of
Xorg -- that is I think the server could be built and used without a
physical monitor or a full Xorg build.
So, how do I integrate this into the book? Feedback appreciated.
-- Bruce
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