F22 System Wide Change: Change xorg input stack to use

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 03:38:04PM +0100, Rave it wrote:
> Am Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:00:07 +0000
> schrieb devel-announce-request at lists.fedoraproject.org:
> 
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:42:11 +0100
> > From: Jaroslav Reznik <jreznik at redhat.com>
> > To: devel-announce at lists.fedoraproject.org
> > Subject: F22 System Wide Change: Change xorg input stack to use
> > 	libinput
> > Message-ID: <4092034.fSnsvv0Gs3 at dhcp-0-163.brq.redhat.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> > 
> > = Proposed System Wide Change: Change xorg input stack to use libinput =
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/LibinputForXorg
> > 
> > Change owner(s): Hans de Goede <hdegoede at redhat.com>
> > 
> > Replace the current (low-level) input xorg drivers with libinput using the 
> > xorg-x11-drv-libinput wrapper. 
> > 
> > == Detailed Description ==
> > Currently xorg uses different input drivers depending on the device type. This 
> > makes it impossible to do things like middle button scrolling on the 
> > trackpoint on laptops where the trackpoint buttons are software-emulated 
> > buttons on the touchpad. Besides this the xf86-input-synaptics driver was 
> > never really designed for multi-touch touchpads and this causes various 
> > issues.
> > 
> > For Wayland we've been working on a new improved input stack, which is to be 
> > shared by all compositors and lives inside libinput. We plan to replace the 
> > current (low-level) input xorg drivers with libinput using the xorg-x11-drv-
> > libinput wrapper. 
> > 
> > == Scope ==
> > Besides xorg changes, this will also require changes to the control panel 
> > applets for mouse / touchpad configuration in the various desktop environments, 
> > as those all are hardcoded to use the xorg-x11-drv-synaptics specific 
> > interfaces.
> > 
> > * Proposal owners:
> > Package libinput and xorg-drv-input-libinput (done), make sure that xorg-drv-
> > input-libinput has the necessary config interfaces for control panel 
> > mouse/touchpad config applets (wip). Write patches for gnome-control-center 
> > mouse/touchpad capplet. Coordinate with other desktop environments.
> > 
> > * Other developers:
> > GNOME: merge the gnome-control-center patches. KDE: limits itself to standard 
> > X11 mouse config interfaces, no changes needed. Other Desktop Environments: 
> > adjust control-panel code to deal with xorg-x11-drv-libinput, merge these 
> > changes.
> > 
> > * Release engineering: N/A
> > * Policies and guidelines: N/A
> 
> I would be very helpful if you could target a x-server version when
> control-center apps should be ready for this change, to help upstreams.
> Can we expect that those x-server changes also land in other distro later?
> Or is this limited to fedora only?

The X server version is independent of this change. You can install
and use xorg-x11-drv-libinput right now and while I haven't tested it, the
driver probably works with anything newer than F18 or so.

Cheers,
   Peter