Issues to be Aware of When Porting Qtopia Core

Qtopia Core is reasonably platform-independent, although the only publically available version is a Linux implementation. If you are looking for a non-Linux commercial implementation, it is worth contacting sales@trolltech.com to see if we can help.

If you plan to do your own port to another operating system, the following dependencies will need to be addressed (files that you'll need to modify are listed at the end of each section):

• System V IPC (shared memory and semaphores) is used to share window regions between client and server. You will need to provide something similar unless you want a single-application setup (i.e. running only one program, which is the server). System V semaphores are also used for synchronizing access to the framebuffer.

  Modify qwindowsystem_qws.cpp, qwsregionmanager_qws.cpp, qapplication_qws.cpp, and qlock_qws.cpp.

• Unix-domain sockets are used to communicate things like keyboard events, requests to raise windows and QCOP messages between applications. Again, you will need to provide something similar unless you want a single-application setup. It should be possible to implement something like this using message queues or similar mechanisms; with the exception of QCOP messages (which are generated by client applications and not Qtopia Core) individual messages should be no more than a few bytes in length.

  Modify qwssocket_qws.cpp.

• The Linux framebuffer device is used to map in the drawing area. You will need to replace it (by creating a new class of QScreen) with something else giving a byte pointer to a memory-mapped framebuffer, plus information about width, height and bit depth (which most likely you can simply hard-code). If your framebuffer is not memory-mapped or is in an unsupported format or depth you will need to modify QGfxRaster as well.

  Modify qgfxlinuxfb_qws.cpp.

• Sound uses a Linux /dev/dsp style device. If you want to use the Qtopia Core sound server you'll need to reimplement it.

  Modify qsoundqss_qws.cpp.

• select() is used to for events to/from the Qtopia Core server application.

  Modify qeventdispatcher_qws.cpp.

Qtopia Core makes use of the standard C library and some POSIX functions. Mostly the latter are concentrated in platform dependent code anyway (e.g. mmap() to map in the Linux framebuffer).