VNC server based on kdrive using damage extension?

[Mark McLoughlin]

Hi Bruce,

On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 19:17, Bruce Bauman wrote:
> We would like to build a lightweight X server which will operate
> "headless". The only display device will be a remote VNC device. In
> other words, the result would be similar to the xf4vnc project at
> sourceforge, but based on freedesktop.org X server technology rather
> than XFree86 4.  We would be willing to undertake all of the
> development, but are looking for some architectural guidance. We would
> of course do this as an open-source project.
> 
> What should we start with as a base? Is there a "new"  X server
> similar to the old Xvfb server? Or should we use something like Xvfb,
> but create a "dummy" frame buffer device?

	I don't know if one already exists for kdrive, but implementing a dummy
frame buffer device is pretty trivial. At one point I ported Xvfb to the
new XFree86 DDX[1] - the only hard part was figuring out how the XFree86
DDX worked ...

> Or, should we just run a standard X server (e.g. kdrive) , and handle
> VNC via a compositor-like application which tracks damage regions (via
> the damage extension) and sends them via the VNC protocol? In this
> case, we wouldn't need to modify the server at all; a special
> compositor application would handle VNC.

	Personally, I think it would be easier to do it this way and should
only be slightly less efficient (the VNC server needs to maintain a copy
of the frame buffer).

Cheers,
Mark.

[1] - http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg02800.html