Xfce4 over DFB

Purpose
For desktop, XFCE is really cute and smart, and especially, highly customized if you are interested in creating your own desktop.

For embedded world, I also think XFCE would be a great choice. xfce is easy to contribute and easy to port, and mostly important, it is really small and extensible, compared with the mainstream embedded GUI environment like GPE or Qtopia. This is quite similar with DirectFB vs X, isn't it?

So,there comes a idea that put the whole xfce over DirectFB, which makes handhelds that have low RAM and is equipped with framebuffer could somehow benefit from xfce. There are guys that already do these things (see another wiki page). I hope a formal branch project will be started with full document and guide, and especially nice hacks from all over the world.

I've made a trial to port xfce-panel to DirectFB like that guy did though no any Howto available. Note that this is only a trial, to see if it worked fine. The result turns out to be great. Here's the screenshot:

Howto
1. Install the DirectFB version of GTK+ libraries, a tutorial Projects:GTK_on_DirectFB is available

2. Install xfce-dev-tools to gtkdfb directory (I don't modify the tool)

3. Install libxfceutils to gtkdfb directory

4. Install libxfcegui without x and mcs-plugin/startup notify support

This is the core library which need be reimplemented with DirectFB support. The main effort would be windows managing. Currently, all Windows managing APIs are unimplemented, I saw some discussion for WM on DFB (See here). Just tested SaWman, seemed quite cool. I am now considering a non-X WM module to XFCE, any suggests?

5. Install libxfcemcs (This library was untouched, so x support must be added)

6. Install libexo without startup notify support and mcs-plugin support

7. Install xfce-panel without x and mcs-plugin/startup notify support: Port xfce-panel to DirectFB is not so hard if libxfcegui was fully implemented with directfb support.

8. Run xfce-panel to see the result.

Souce
Undergoing :).