I'm trying to get an application (Quake2) to run without a window manager.

Curiously, the way it's built now, I can run it like:

startx ./quake2

and the video and sound works, but I get no mouse or keyboard events.

On the same system, I've also compiled from source QuakeSpasm and DarkPlaces SDL, which, when loaded the same way, work perfectly.

These were all built on the same system, with the same drivers, same libraries, same compiler, one right after another. The results are consistent from day to day.

this leads me to think there must be some hook in the code itself that's having an effect on how X is handing control over to the application at launch time.

I'm at the point of reading through the source code of both QuakeSpasm and DarkPlaces (several other applications work perfectly too, these are just the most relevant examples) just to see what they do and see if I can graft that behavior onto Quake 2....but I would hope there's a "right way" to do it, for which there might just be documentation.


Thoughts?

for mouse to be active in the tty

What is gpm? click here

I'm confused by the line "What is gpm?"

but....if the other two engines are working, mustn't it also be the case that my system - down to tty is already configured to work correctly?

I'll have to take a look at the link when I get home, but thank you for the suggestion.

Maybe give Yamagi Quake2, vkQuake2, or another source port a try?

gpm, gives you a mouse on the tty before startx, thought it might give you access to a mouse in the game.

Interesting read here. ftp://ftp.wayne.edu/ldp/en/Quake-HOWTO/Quake-HOWTO.txt

That is an interesting read, for sure. Ear marking that for future use, but I think I know most of what's already in it.

I'm actually working primarily with Yamagi Quake 2 and have spoken with Yamagi about exactly this. He and the other dev were as confused as I am, so my hope was to fork YQ2 and try to sift out whatever weirdness is causing this issue.

I've not heard of vkQuake2, I'll have to give that a shot.



All of this has me wondering if there's not anything special that should be done in the code to make a program work without a window manager. Many applications seem to do it by accident!

With only the utmost respect for Yamagi's work, I wonder if something is being done /wrong/ as opposed to not at all, like I had thought.

Maybe there's not "a way" to write or build applications that work without a window manager...I'm slowly getting the impression that's simply how they should work by default provided they're linked against Xorg and OpenGL where necessary.

I'd be curious to hear from an Xorg dev....or maybe there's an Xorg forum I should visit?


Thanks again for the suggestions and responses thus far!

A window manager (x based window managers - are there any other kind?) cannot run without xorg so it's a catch 22.