Vnc is a useful protocol to connect a thin-client to a server, or in the
case of embedded systems to connect a gui client to a display-less embedded
system. Xvnc is the combination of a X11 server able to run all the known
X11 applications, and of a vnc server offering a thin-client interface to
a remote user. It offers the advantage over http that it can show spontaneous
events at the server side without polling from the user side, and that it
can use every X11 existing application to build the interface. For video
applications it also offers for free zero-delay streaming.

Although the Xorg server is written exclusively in C, the Xvnc part is written
in C++. That makes its footprint unnecessarily larger, and limits its
availability to platforms for which a working C++ (cross-)compiler exists.
This is not always the case, even if the C compiler works.

Here are IIRC the c++ files :

./pvnc-1.0.5/vnc_unix/xc/programs/Xserver/vnc/Xvnc/xvnc.cc
./pvnc-1.0.5/vnc_unix/xc/programs/Xserver/vnc/vncHooks.cc
./pvnc-1.0.5/vnc_unix/xc/programs/Xserver/vnc/xf86vncModule.cc
./pvnc-1.0.5/vnc_unix/xc/programs/Xserver/vnc/module/XserverDesktop.cc
./pvnc-1.0.5/vnc_unix/xc/programs/Xserver/vnc/module/vncExtInit.cc

This should take less than 2 weeks of development and test.

Philippe De Muyter wrote:

Although the Xorg server is written exclusively in C, the Xvnc part is written
in C++.

Thanks. A page for this proposal is at:
http://elinux.org/CELF_Project_Proposal/Suppress_Xvnc_dependency_on_C%2B%2B

-- Tim

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Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Corporation of America
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