Hardware-accelerated GUI

[dvd...@gmail.com]

I have to develop a GUI application for Beaglebone Black. As I'm using Gtk, it's unacceptably slow. Problem is that the SGX drivers don't work with X, so I have to access the frame buffer directly somehow.

Using Gtk is ideal but not necessary - my goal is to develop a GUI that makes use of hardware rendering, so whichever means to achieve that is welcome (within reasonable limits - getting too low-level wouldn't be practicable).

What I've managed to accomplish so far:

1) Install Debian 9.1 on the SD card (http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/bone-debian-9.1-lxqt-armhf-2017-08-31-4gb.img.xz)

2) Install the SGX drivers:

2.1) Install a 4.4 LTS kernel as described here:

cd /opt/scripts/tools/
git pull
sudo ./update_kernel.sh --bone-kernel --lts-4_4
sudo reboot

2.2) On a x86 linux environment (VM, whatever):

git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/bb-kernel.git
cd bb-kernel/
git checkout origin/am33x-v4.4 -b tmp-sgx
./sgx_create_package.sh

2.3) Copy ./deploy/GFX_5.01.01.02_es8.x.tar.gz to BBB. Once there…

sudo tar xfv GFX_5.01.01.02_es8.x.tar.gz -C /
cd /opt/gfxinstall/
sudo ./sgx-install.sh
sudo reboot
sudo apt-get install ti-sgx-es8-modules-`uname -r`

sudo depmod -a `uname -r`
sudo update-initramfs -uk `uname -r`

2.4) Load drivers manually

cd /etc/init.d
sudo ./sgx-startup.sh start

2.5) Verify that drivers are loaded correctly:

lsmod | grep omaplfb

I see that there's a number of libraries (Clutter, raylib, simple2d), some specifically targeting the Raspberry (should be pretty similar?), that support OpenGL ES, but they all fail to build for one reason or another. I suppose they all build some tailored version of SDL, so I tried building SDL from scratch without X11 support as detailed here, but then the examples compiled with this version complain that there is no available video device.

Any thoughts?