Bumblebee Overview

This page tries to establish a design for Bumblebee. It's aimed at developers. Developers are encouraged to discuss the points below.

Installation

The installation is distinct from configuration because it has to be executed only once.

clean the mess named bumblebee-enablecard and other unremoved files
uninstall previous Bumblebee versions
display driver installation (currently nvidia, nouveau as option for the future)
(Ubuntu, possibly others?) to avoid breaking the Intel display, set the default GL lib to Mesa
virtualgl
setup initscript / daemon (for now, it starts the X server)
add a group which is allowed to use bumblebee
~~(old approach) add user to sudoers to allow enabling/disabling the X server using the initscript~~

We should allow for unattended installations and choose sensible defaults.

VGL preferences (see also User's Guide for VirtualGL: 19 Advanced configuration)
VGL_COMPRESS sets the compression method for framestransport possible values: yuv, jpeg, proxy (VGL default), xv (BB default), rgb
VGL_DISPLAY sets the X display to be used (this display is started by Bumblebee)
VGL_READBACK - "Specify the method used by VirtualGL to read back the 3D pixels from the 3D graphics hardware" (???)
VGL_LOG - set to /dev/null to discard all VGL messages, an empty value should default to outputting to stderr
Bumblebee-specific stuff:
ECO_MODE - if not connected to a power supply, new programs do not use the nvidia card when ECO_MODE is set to 1.

should start X server on request
- Use a single X server for now, see issue 8
allow for driver switching? (probably not, user should edit configfile and restart bumblebee)
automatically shutdown X when unused for configurable seconds?
initscript starts the bumblebee daemon which is located in /usr/sbin/bumblebee or /usr/local/sbin/bumblebee.
Options for bumblebee:
- --version - prints the version on the first line. License and credits on the next lines
- -d - this option is passed by the initscript to instruct starting a daemon
- If no options are passed, a informational message should be printed. Probably the possible options

/etc/bumblebee was a file in 1.7.10 and before (PPA 2.2.0 and before), containing the version number like:

Bumblebee Version: 2.2.0 Worst. Decision. Ever. From now on, we'll create a directory for storing configuration files. (/etc/bumblebee/) The version will be stored in the daemon file.