X server 1.9 release thoughts

[Keith Packard]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2010 16:29:13 +1000, Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:

> From the input drivers POV merging them in provides little benefit as of yet
> and would probably be even detrimental to testing.

Yeah, we keep comparing the X server to the kernel and we really need to
understand the fundamental difference -- kernels need drivers for dozens
of devices for every machine. X needs very few -- video, keyboard, mouse
and touchpad. And, X has external dependencies which aren't going to be
integrated -- libdrm and Mesa. So, we're not now in a place where we
could offer a single package that can work independent of other pieces.

I think we should continue to consider when and where further
re-unification of the source code would be valuable for developers and
testers of our code. It may be that just unifying the protocol headers
helps enough that we can get people to the point of testing the master
version of drivers or the X server.

> except those patches where you are the most likely person to review
> them? I seem to have a few of them, mostly code that's old enough to drive,
> if not drink.

Right, if you know a specific developer that should be reviewing a
patch, you should Cc: them. If that's also the release manager, then you
should make it clear in the message that you're asking for review and
not asking to have the patch merged :-)

> We also had some overlap where I picked up patches at the same time as you
> did, causing some overlap. I think that's better now but we still don't
> really have a strict divide. More tree maintainers to snap up patches would
> be handy here.

Something that might help here is to publish the list of subsystems and
who is the maintainer in charge of them. That should be in the project
tree itself so that anyone can find the right person. Sometimes it's
hard to know which subsystem a particular patch affects though. If you
find a patch that you want to shepherd and which has been sent directly
to me, you'd be welcome to reply with a note claiming ownership. I'll
try to keep my eye out when looking for stuff to integrate.

-- 
keith.packard at intel.com
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