Input: Hard-keys input support using libinput and weston 1.8.0

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 11:43:34AM +0530, Vikas Patil wrote:
> I have a requirement where Hard-Keys input events (e.g. Home button, Back
> button, Volume buttons or Volume Rotary Knobs) needs to be injected into
> weston compositor and passed to application or application can listen on
> those events using wayland/weston some way.

probably best to explain the use-case you have in a bit more detail, there
may be more than one solution (or zero, come to think of it :)

> Does weston 1.8.0 and libinput supports such kind of inputs? Or Do I need
> to extend the full path of input (evdev -> libinput -> weston) to support
> this? How much effort require for this?Thanks
> 
> Could you give some suggestions/ideas to start this as I am very new to
> input handling? It would be also helpful if you could refer me some
> docs/links to understand this?

libinput forwards key events from evdev devices pretty much as-is, weston
handles it depending on the keyboard layout. so one solution is to create a
uinput device that generates those events and let the rest of the stack do
the thing it does anyway. That requires root privs to create the uinput
device though.

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/ has a simple
architecture diagram.
you can't inject events into libinput directly, and afaik there is no
waylan protocol extension to allow you to this there either.

Cheers,
   Peter