Advanced DRM Mode-Setting API (original) (raw)

I recently wrote a short How-To that introduces the linux DRM Mode-Setting API. It didn’t use any advanced techniques but I got several responses that it is a great introduction if you want to get started with linux DRM Mode-Setting. So I decided to go further and extend the examples to use double-buffering and vsync’ed page-flips.

The first extension that I wrote can be found here:

https://github.com/dvdhrm/docs/blob/master/drm-howto/modeset-double-buffered.c

It extends the old example to use two buffers so we no longer render into the front-buffer. It reduces a lot of tearing that you get when using the single-buffered example. However, it is still not perfect as you might swap the front and back buffer during a scanout-period and the display-controller will use the new buffer in the middle of the screen. So I extended this further to do the page-flip during a vertical-blank period using drmModePageFlip(). You can find this example here:

https://github.com/dvdhrm/docs/blob/master/drm-howto/modeset-vsync.c

This example also shows how to wait for page-flip events and integrate it into any select(), poll() or epoll based event-loop. Everything regarding page-flip-timing beyond that point depends on the use-cases and can get very hard to get right. I recommend reading Owen Taylor’s posts #1 and #2 on frame-timing for compositors.

There are still many more things like “DRM hardware-accelerated rendering”, “DRM planes/overlays/sprites”, “DRM flink/dmabuf buffer-passing” that I want to write How-Tos for. But time is short around Christmas so that’ll have to wait until next year.

Feedback is always welcome and you can find my email address in all the examples. Happy reading!