= KMSCON =

Kmscon is a simple terminal emulator based on linux kernel mode setting (KMS).
It is an attempt to replace the in-kernel VT implementation with a userspace
console.

== Requirements ==

  Kmscon requires the following software:
    - libudev: providing input, video, etc. device hotplug support

  Everything else is optional:

    For video output at least one of the following is required:
      - fbdev: For framebuffer video output the kernel headers must be installed
               and located in the default include path.
      - DRM: For unaccelerated drm output the "libdrm" library must be installed
             and accessible via pkg-config.
      - OpenGLES2: For accelerated video output via OpenGLESv2 the following must
                   be installed: libdrm, libgbm, egl, glesv2 (i.e., mesa)

    By default a very limited built-in keyboard handling is used. To get other
    keyboard layouts working, the following is required:
      - libxkbcommon: keyboard handling (optional but strongly recommended)
                      Without libxkbcommon, basic US-ASCII input is provided.
    libxkbcommon has no public release, yet, but is available on freedesktop.org.
    Use "--disable-xkbcommon" if you have problems due to compile-errors.

    For font handling the following is required:
      - glib: only for Unicode handling
      - pango: drawing text with pango
               Pango requires: glib, cairo, pangocairo, pango and freetype2
    Both (glib and pango) dependencies will be removed soon and made optional with
    plain freetype2+font-config being the fall-back.

    For multi-seat support you need the following packages:
      - systemd: Actually only the systemd-logind daemon and library is required.

== Install ==

  To compile the kmscon binary, run the standard autotools commands:
    $ ./autogen.sh (you need this only when building from git directly)
    $ ./configure [--enable-debug] (debug-mode is strongly recommended)
    $ make
    $ make install (TODO: this is currently not supported)
  To compile the test applications, run:
    $ make check

  If you want only a very basic kmscon program without that much dependencies,
  use:
    $ ./configure --disable-debug --disable-drm --disable-xkbcommon --disable-systemd

== Running ==

  To get usage information, run:
    $ ./kmscon --help
  You can then run kmscon with:
    $ ./kmscon [options] --switchvt
  The --switchvt option will make your machine switch the active VT directly to
  kmscon after starting it. (this is currently not implemented, though)

  For debug output use "--debug". For verbose output use "--verbose". If you
  didn't compile DRM support then you can use "--fbdev" to make kmscon select
  available framebuffer devices.

  With "--xkb-layout=<lang>" you can switch the keyboard layout.

== License ==

  This software is licensed under the terms of the MIT license. Please see
  ./COPYING for further information.

== FAQ ==

  Please see http://github.com/dvdhrm/kmscon/wiki

== Contact ==

  This software is maintained by:
    David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@googlemail.com>
  If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact one of the maintainers.

== Code Base ==

  The kmscon code is split into several independent subsystems:
    - uterm:
      This code manages the KMS/DRI output and provides OpenGL framebuffers.
    - console:
      This draws the text on the screen and provides an API for any terminal
      emulator to visualize its contents.
    - eloop:
      Main loop implementation.
    - log:
      Log file handling.
    - unicode:
      Provides basic Unicode handling.
    - font:
      Font loading, caching and drawing operations.
    - input:
      All linux input events are captured here and converted to Unicode
      characters for input handling.
    - vt:
      The linux VT subsystem integration. This allows to run the application in
      a classic linux VT like X does.
    - vte:
      The terminal emulator library.
    - terminal:
      Connects the console, output, input and vte handling into a real terminal.
    - main:
      This connects all subsystems into a usable console application.