added readme and license

[retrobench] / README.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..86ed017
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+Retrobench
+==========
+A multi-platform framebuffer drawing performance benchmark targetted towards
+retro PCs.
+
+Retrobench intends to test how different operating systems, drawing methods,
+and graphics hardware, affect drawing performance for a pure software rendering,
+framebuffer access context.
+
+Currently implemented benchmarks:
+
+  - Fast XOR pattern scrolling: pure framebuffer write speed testing
+
+Currently supported platforms/drawing methods:
+
+  - UNIX X11 with the X shared memory extension (XShmPutImage).
+  - GNU/Linux with framebuffer console (fbdev).
+  - DOS direct framebuffer access through VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE).
+
+License
+-------
+Copyright (C) 2021 John Tsiombikas <nuclear@member.fsf.org>
+
+This program is free software. Feel free to use, modify, and/or redistribute it
+under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3, or at your option any
+later version published by the Free Software Foundation. See COPYING for
+details.
+
+Build on UNIX
+-------------
+Simply typing `make` should build both the X11 and fbdev version of the
+benchmark. The only dependency is Xlib, for the X11 version.
+
+Build on DOS
+------------
+Set up a DJGPP build environment and type `make -f Makefile.dj`.