Nightly builds?

[Tormod Volden]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:27 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've noticed a few old video chipsets are dropping off the edge of Xorg.

> 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.

For Ubuntu there is the xorg-edgers PPA (personal package archive)
which have done exactly this for years:
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers

It is even easier than "download" because users can subscribe to it as
a normal package repository (although we do not really recommend this
for everyone) and get their daily crack through the "Update Manager".

> 2. Make the source build easier, so people will build and run it from
> source for the more obscure platforms.

In the xorg-edgers team code section, there are scripts (for Debian
family distros) to simplify building the whole stack from git and wrap
it in Debian packages with no git or dpkg skills needed.

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

Testing is very welcome. Typically users with newer material are the
most keen users of the PPA since they often gain new features and
higher performance. Those with older material unfortunately do not
have the same incentive to keep trying the latest software. As an
example the release of Ubuntu 9.10 exposed many issues for users with
old ATI hardware which had not been reported before. On the other
hand, the PPA is very popular among users with Intel hardware (because
the quality of the driver in Ubuntu 9.04 reached a point where it
could only improve) so we get instant feedback almost at a per-commit
basis.

Tormod