Vimputti

vimputti

An isolated input system (emulator? simulator?) for Docker/Podman/etc. containers running Linux.

Written in Rust cuz I'm lazy and don't want to deal with C/C++ (I hate dealing with C/C++ build systems and dependencies).

Name comes from the Finnish word/saying "himputti" which means "darn" or "dang it". Which was my reaction to the whole situation.. someone smarter than me, go and make things better please!

Why?

Because I didn't want to pass /dev/uinput and other host mess into my container just to have virtual controllers.

Also I wanted more isolation between host and container.

How it works

vimputti consists of couple parts, the LD_PRELOAD shim library, the manager daemon and the library API for applications to use.

LD_PRELOAD shim

The shim intercepts various API calls and redirects them to the manager. It is buildable for both 32-bit and 64-bit needs (i.e. Steam requires 32-bit for some reason still).

Manager daemon

Manager handles socket messaging (by default via /tmp/vimputti-0) and manages virtual input devices in the /tmp/vimputti/ directory.

Library API

The library API is used by applications to super simply create various controller devices and send input events to them. Currently Rust only, feel free to create a new issue for more bindings.

Building

Shim

64-bit: cargo build --release --package vimputti-shim 32-bit: cargo build --release --package vimputti-shim --target i686-unknown-linux-gnu

Manager daemon

cargo build --release --package --package vimputti-manager

TODOs (in no particular order)

• [ ] More bindings (C/C++, Go..)

Credits for wonderful people

• Games-on-Whales - for their work on and insights on Linux input systems.
• @ABeltramo - seriously man, thank you for being great and listening to my rants :P
• @flumf - for listening to me complaining about computers :3

License

MIT License, see LICENSE file for details.

It's open-source for a reason, everyone should be able to benefit from my weeks of pain.

Note

LLM(s) were ~~abused~~ used to generate some of the code, obviously I proofread it and fixed some junk and mistakes.

They're tools, and with how bad code they write, they won't replace caffeine-addicted programmers too soon.

Duck

Eater of bugs, judger of spaghetti code.

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