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Graphics-Framebuffer-6.75
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Graphics-Framebuffer

Graphics::Framebuffer Logo

Windows Incompatibility

Windows Incompatible

Note, this module does NOT work (natively) in Microsoft Windows. It will only function in "emulation" mode, and you will not see any screen output. See the documentation on emulation mode for more details.

Use a Virtual Machine like VirtualBox to use on Windows, with a Linux distribution installed.

PREREQUISITES

This module was developed for Linux, but can work on any Unix-like OS as long as it has a framebuffer. HOWEVER, for anything other than Linux, it's not likely to work out of the box. It expects a framebuffer inside of "/dev". It also requires a Linux-specific IOCTL call to be able to query the structure of the framebuffer. This query requires a portion of the kernel source code to be used to understand the kernel structure returned from the IOCTL call. The actual module code can work on something like FreeBSD, but considerable overhead modification needs to be done for the build process to make it actually work. I suggest using Linux if you want to exploit the framebuffer, especially a UEFI install to make it the easiest.

This module REQUIRES access to the video framebuffer, usually "/dev/fb0". You must be using a video device and driver that exposes this device to software. Video cards with their proprietary drivers are not likely to work. However, most open-sourced drivers, seem to work fine. VirtualBox drivers work too. You must also have the appropriate permissions to write to this device (usually membership with group "video").

Sometimes you can force a VESA framebuffer console driver to be loaded by adding a video mode to the grub command line. You can do this with some proprietary video drivers that don't have their own framebuffer drivers.

ATTENTION CPAN TESTERS! Please make sure the above is noted before testing (and marking a fail)

If you want a more detailed instruction than this document, then read "INSTALL.md".

I highly recommend you install the system (or package) version of the "Imager" library, as it is already pre-compiled with all the needed C libraries for it to work with this module. In Yum (RedHat) and Aptitude (Debian/Ubuntu) this module is called "libimager-perl" (or "perl-libImager"). However, if you desire to install it yourself, please do it manually, and not via CPAN. When you do it manually, you can see the missing C libraries it is looking for in the "Makefile.PL" process and stop it there. You can then install these libraries until it no longer says something is missing. You see, it just turns off functionality if it can't find a library (when installing from CPAN), instead of stopping. Libraries usually missing are those for GIF, JPEG, PNG, TrueType and FreeType fonts. These are necessary not optional, if you wish to be able to work with fonts and images.

The "build-essential" tools need to be installed. This is generally a C compiler, linker, and standard C libraries (usually gcc variety). The module "Inline::C", which this module uses, requires it. Also, the package "kernel-headers".

You should also install typical TTF fonts as well. I suggest the FreeType fonts, the Windows fonts (fonts-wine), Ubuntu fonts (fonts-ubuntu) and anything else you wish to use.

INSTALLATION

You SHOULD install this module from the console, not X-Windows.

To make your system ready for this module, then please install the following:

DEBIAN BASED SYSTEMS (Ubuntu, Mint, Raspian, etc):

installation/install-prerequisites-debian.sh

REDHAT BASED SYSTEMS (Fedora, CentOS, etc):

installation/install-prerequisites-redhat.sh

You can use the following to detect your distribution type:

installation/detect.sh

LINUX IN VIRTUALBOX WITH EFI

Add the following to your "vbox" XML definition file (do not edit this file while any VirtualBox utility/GUI/VM is running):

<ExtraData>
    <ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution" value="3840x2160"/>
</ExtraData>

The "ExtraData" section may already have other definitions in it. Just place the "ExtraDataItem" as the last definition. You can Set the resolution to anything sane.

Continuing...

With that out of the way, you can now install this module.

To install this module, run the following commands:

       perl Makefile.PL
       make
       make test
[sudo] make install

Build.PL is not supported by Inline::C, and thus not by this module as well.

FURTHER TEST SCRIPTS

To test the installation properly. Log into the text console (not X). Go to the examples directory and run primitives.pl. It basically calls most of the features of the module.

The scripts beginning with 'thread' requires ' Sys::CPU '. It is not listed as a prerequisite for this module (as it isn't), but if you want to run the threaded scripts, then this is a required module. It demonstrates how to use this module in a threaded environment.

Mario Roy's MCE test scripts have been added (well, a script to go get them) to demonstrate alternate multiprocessing methods of using Graphics::Framebuffer, even with Perls built without threads support.

GETTING STARTED

There is a script template in the examples directory in this package. You can use it as a starting point for your script. It is conveniently called template.pl or threaded_template.pl. I recommend copying it, renaming it, and leaving the original template intact for use on another project.

COMPATIBILITY vs. SPEED

This module, suprisingly, runs on a variety of hardware with accessible framebuffer devices. The only limitation is CPU power. Why CPU power? The module uses the CPU for its graphics calculations and drawing, not the GPU. There are very little framebuffer drivers that use the GPU for anything, and thus no reliable libraries for calling the GPU at the framebuffer level.

Some lower clocked ARM devices may be too slow for practical use of all of the methods in this module, but the best way to find out is to run examples/primitives.pl to see which are fast enough to use.

Here's what I have tested this module on (all at least 1920x1080x32):

SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the 'perldoc' command.

perldoc Graphics::Framebuffer (You may have to install 'perldoc', but this usually works.)

or

man Graphics::Framebuffer (Installing 'perldoc' usually enables Perl module man pages)

You can also look for information at:

Copyright © 2013-2025 Richard Kelsch

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.

See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.