How can I use a gamepad with Gazebo? Is ROS required for that? Do I need to build Gazebo with a certain compile-time option?

Hi. I'm trying to get started with Gazebo by playing around. I am running Linux, and I have a working joypad available at /dev/input/js1, /dev/input/event22, and /dev/hidraw6. The permissions for all 3 device nodes is ugo+rw. I don't see anywhere in the Gazebo user interface to configure a controller, and I can hardly find any instructions online. All that I do find seem to require ROS. Is there any way to do this without ROS?