[ANNOUNCE] xorg-server 1.18.2

[Michel Dänzer]

Hi Adam,


first of all, thanks for merging changes to the master and stable
branches. The below is intended as constructive feedback.


On 12.03.2016 07:04, Adam Jackson wrote:
> A big pile of updates in this one. Highlights include:
> 
> - glamor is updated to use OpenGL core profiles if available, which
> should improve memory usage and performance on modern hardware, and got
> some other performance improvements for rpi and other GLES platforms
> 
> - DRI2, DRI3, and Present all received correctness fixes for hangs,
> crashes, and other weirdness
> 
> - Xwayland server has been updated to support the Xv and the
> xf86vidmode extensions for better compatibility, and fixed some bugs
> with output hotplug and pointer updates
> 
> - Xwin saw improvements to window and clipboard management, and a few
> new keyboard layouts
> 
> Full change list below. Many thanks to all for fixes and code review.

I can't help feeling that this went a bit overboard for a stable
release. There are many changes in there which seem clearly or at least
borderline features instead of fixes. If it's taking too long for new
features to reach users, that would be better addressed by more frequent
major releases instead.

Unfortunately, some of the backported fixes caused problems for users as
well, though some of those were not regressions as much as a fix
exposing pre-existing bugs elsewhere. (BTW,
https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/78155/ is still pending to fix
such an issue)


Maybe there are some lessons to be learned from the Mesa release
process, e.g.:

* There's a streamlined process for nominating changes to be backported
from master to stable branches (via a specially formatted Cc: tag in the
commit log which is parsed by a script to generate a list of changes to
be backported; this scheme was inspired by the Linux kernel). The
developer making a fix is usually in the best position to judge whether
the fix should be backported to stable branches or not.

* There is soaking time (usually at least a week) between backporting
changes to a stable branch and making a release. In contrast, for the
xorg-server 1.18.2 release, I was already in the weekend when you first
talked about backporting changes on IRC, and by the time my weekend was
over, the release was already out.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer               |               http://www.amd.com
Libre software enthusiast             |             Mesa and X developer