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248.1.1
by Alan Griffiths
Add doxygen skeleton |
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Welcome to MirAL {#mainpage}
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MirAL is an ABI stable abstraction layer over Mir (and some working examples). |
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250.1.1
by Alan Griffiths
Why MirAL? |
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Why MirAL?
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Mir is a library for writing Linux display servers and shells that are |
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independent of the underlying graphics stack. It fits into a similar role as an |
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X server or Weston (a Wayland server) but was initially motivated by Canonical’s |
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vision of "convergent" computing. |
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The Mir project has had some success in meeting Canonical’s immediate needs – |
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it is running in the Ubuntu Touch phones and tablets, and as an experimental |
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option for running the Unity8 shell on the desktop. But because of the |
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concentration of effort on delivering the features needed for this internal use |
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it hasn’t really addressed the needs of potential users outside of Canonical. |
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Mir provides two APIs for users: the "client" API is for applications that run |
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on Mir and that is largely used by toolkits. There is support for Mir in the GTK |
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and Qt toolkits, and in SDL. This works pretty well and the Mir client API has |
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remained backwards compatible for a couple of years and can do so for the |
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foreseeable future. |
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The problem is that the server-side ABI compatibility is broken by almost every |
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release of Mir. This isn’t a big problem for Canonical, as the API is fairly |
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stable and both Mir and Unity8 are in rapid development: rebuilding Unity8 |
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every time Mir is released is a small overhead. But for independent developers |
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the lack of a stable ABI is problematic as they cannot easily synchronize their |
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releases to updates of Mir. |
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250.1.4
by Alan Griffiths
Reword for clarity |
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MirAL is the answer to this: It offers an "abstraction layer" written over the |
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top of the current Mir server API that will provide a stable ABI. There are a |
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number of other goals that can be addressed at the same time: |
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250.1.1
by Alan Griffiths
Why MirAL? |
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- The API can be considerably narrowed as a lot of things can be customized
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that are of no interest to shell development; |
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- A more declarative design style can be followed than the implementation
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focused approach that the Mir server API follows; and, |
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- Common facilities can be provided that don’t belong in the Mir libraries.
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Mir is supported on a range of platforms including phones, tablets and desktops. |
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There is also work to provide it as a "snap" in the "internet of things". The |
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miral-shell already works in all these environments (for a suitably forgiving |
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value of "works") and is an early opportunity to learn about this alternative |
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to X11. |
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248.1.2
by Alan Griffiths
Add the existing docs to the doxygen output |
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Notes for Developers
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--------------------
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330.160.4
by Alan Griffiths
Another pass |
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- \ref getting_and_using_miral
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250.1.2
by Alan Griffiths
Introducing the Miral API |
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- \ref introducing_the_miral_api
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248.1.2
by Alan Griffiths
Add the existing docs to the doxygen output |
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- \ref tasks_for_the_interested_reader
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