rustevents

A Rust-based Linux devices input events reader.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
• Arguments
• Examples

Features

• Reads input events from specified Linux input device files (e.g., /dev/input/eventX or dumps).
• Supports customizable keyboard layouts, models, rules, and locales.
• Handles key states and compose sequences for multi-character input.
• Outputs UTF-8 characters to standard output for real-time interaction.

Requirements

• Rust.
• xkbcommon: Development libraries for keyboard handling.

On Debian/Ubuntu

You can install the necessary xkbcommon library with the following command:

sudo apt-get install libxkbcommon-dev

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/lhamouche/rustevents
   cd rustevents

2. Build the project:

   cargo build --release

3. Run the compiled binary located in the target/release/ directory.

Usage

./target/release/rustevents [OPTIONS] --file <FILE>

Arguments

Argument	Short	Default	Description
file	-f	(required)	The path to the input device file (e.g., /dev/input/eventX).
rules	-r	evdev	The rules for the keyboard layout (e.g., evdev, xorg).
model	-m	pc105	The keyboard model.
layout	-l	us	The keyboard layout (e.g., us, fr).
variant	-v	""	Optional layout variant.
locale	-c	en_US.UTF-8	The locale for compose sequences.
no-numlock	-n	false	Do not assume that Num Lock is active by default.

Examples

1. Read input events from a keyboard connected to /dev/input/event0:

   ./target/release/rustevents --file /dev/input/event0

2. Specify a different layout ,variant and locale:

   ./target/release/rustevents --file event0 --layout fr --variant latin9 -c fr.UTF-8