Smooth transition from exquisite to X11

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Thu Sep 4 02:12:21 CEST 2008


Hi Graeme,

seems that you're the lucky one who has last touched exquisite :-)

The transition from exquisite to X11 is bugging Will, and it ended
up in my lap because it involves startup screens. It's deep in user
space, though, so I think I can bounce this to you. Holger may be
interested as well, but may be a bit short of time these days.

The problem: when we start, we go through a fairly long sequence of
different screens:

1) initial darkness while u-boot is gathering its powers
2) the boot splash screen
3) a bit of kernel text console
4) the boots with progress bar (exquisite)
5) some more kernel text console
6) the boots with the green thingy bouncing left and right
   (enlightenment initialization, under X11)
7) finally the GUI

It's 5) that Will doesn't like.

I've discussed this with Carsten on IRC and the issue is that
exquisite terminates after it's done its deed, and only then X11
comes up. So there's a brief interval in which the console is
handed back to the kernel.

A relatively straightforward solution may work as follows:

- don't exit exquisite when it's done, so that it keeps its VT
  with the final screen content

- bring up X11, which allocates a new VT, but keep it from
  switching to that VT (how to do this is left as an exercise to
  the reader ;-)

- once enlightenment has started showing stuff, switch VTs and
  kill exquisite

Can I leave this to you ? Not sure how urgent it really is,
given that there's bigger fish rotting in this pond ...

Thanks,
- Werner



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