target_devicehint(3)

okay bestie, real talk: this one's from the Arcan Lua API and it's a whole multitasker 💅

✨ NAME ✨

target_devicehint — change connection- and device- use for a frameserver connection 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nil
target_devicehint( vid:dsrv, number:device )
target_devicehint( vid:fsrv, string:target )
target_devicehint( vid:fsrv, string:target, bool:force(=false) )

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so this function literally serves several uses and honestly it's giving main character energy with how many hats it wears 👑

Use case number one: forwarding a device handle to an accelerated client 🎀 This happens when you pass the device argument and it matches a valid card identifier. If you hand it an invalid identifier tho? no big deal, the call just gets interpreted as a mode hint, periodt.

The mode argument can also be specified as a device-use hint. Bestie, previously this was used to indicate whether the client should produce a buffer for direct output on the device in question — but that's now done heuristically as part of map_video_display calls. So the valid values now are:

• DEVICE_INDIRECT — for composed rendering 💖
• DEVICE_LOST — this one says the currently used GPU should be dropped and, if possible, revert to software-defined graphics 💀

The other uses are with a string target. This is what you use to indicate a connection point to another arcan-shmif capable server ✨ The default vibe is to mark this as a hint: 'in the event of the main connection being lost, please go here' 🫶

If the force argument is also set, the connection may be forcibly severed to make the client switch to the specified connection point 😭 The target string is assumed to match the valid rules for a connection point, but if the association is not forced, an empty string is also valid and will be interpreted as disabling a previously set alternate connection. iconic.

There are two special forms to the target string:

• the a12:// and a12s:// prefix — this will involve the arcan-net tool to connect to a server 🌈
• the @ or @host suffix — like mytag@. This will use keystore tags to find outbound connection parameters 🔑

These forms will also provide the fsrv vid access to a keystore capability 👑

---

✨ NOTES ✨

1. The keystore access is currently the same as the one handed to the arcan process. Bestie, this may be changed in the future 👀
2. If the forced target migration mode is used on a frameserver launched in an authoritative mode via define_avfeed or similar functions, the process tracking will be disabled and the kill 'guarantee' on delete_image will be lost 😭 for real, keep that in mind.

lowkey important: note 2 is the one that'll bite you 🫶

✨ EXAMPLE ✨

function target_devicehint0()
      target_alloc("devicehint", function(source, status)
            if (status.kind == "connected") then
                  target_devicehint(source, "devicehint", true); -- send fallback path
                  target_devicehint(source, 0); -- send rendernode
            end
      end);
end

---

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this came to you from targetcontrol, dated October 2026, and it's all target_devicehint(3) energy. slay, go write some frameservers 🎀✨