Nightly builds?

[David Gerard]

I've noticed a few old video chipsets are dropping off the edge of Xorg.

This is entirely understandable - Xorg has too few developers
desperately trying to drag the 1990s code base into the twenty-first
century and there are very few testers for the ancient chips. So many
of them have broken, and no-one much notices until the distros release
that version of X. No-one wants this to happen, but it does.

e.g. Ubuntu 9.10 is fantastic on current chips. (Typing this on my new
work Portege R600. Wobbly windows a go go!) But old stuff is showing
breakage, and it's unlikely to be fixed.

The one thing that occurs to me is: make testing of git head much
easier. Much, much easier.

1. Nightly builds. Did wonders for Mozilla. Binary of main supported
architectures (linux/i386, opensolaris, whatever someone will be able
to commit to build nightly). Download and run. Report bugs.
2. Make the source build easier, so people will build and run it from
source for the more obscure platforms.

1. requires build server, web server and bandwidth resources. 2.
requires polishing and debugging and making it very easy for people to
just keep up with X with a git pull.

Ideas? Is this pointing toward something useful?

(I'm not a coder myself or I'd be bashing on 2., but I do like
reviving crusty old machinery.)


- d.