X.Org Server 1.10 Release Plans; Drivers May Still Go In

[phoronix]

Phoronix: X.Org Server 1.10 Release Plans; Drivers May Still Go In

While there are only a few days left until the 2010 X Developers' Summit, Keith Packard has laid out his plans for the development of X.Org Server 1.10...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODU5MA

[brent]

If there's one thing that benefits from a modularized X.Org, it's drivers, especially graphics drivers. Please don't move them back into X.Org.

Everything else, yeah do it already, it was time. The mess of lots of tiny modules needs to be cleaned up.

[FireBurn]

If there's one thing that benefits from a modularized X.Org, it's drivers, especially graphics drivers. Please don't move them back into X.Org.

Everything else, yeah do it already, it was time. The mess of lots of tiny modules needs to be cleaned up.

Who exactly does it benefit though?

If you're a distro user, you'd never know the difference if the distro is doing their job properly

The developers are tending towards merging back into the server so there are fewer testing combinations - they're also the ones putting the hard work in

There are very few people who compile the source from scratch themselves (without something like portage) & those that do shouldn't find it too difficult to do the server too

[brent]

I personally benefit:
I've updated DDX only on many occasions so far. Usually that works just fine and I've been able to easily get important bugfixes and performance improvements this way. There are PPAs just for driver updates on Ubuntu, so I'm sure many users benefit from modularized drivers exactly like me. For example, for Intel users it should be a no-brainer to install the updated 2.12 DDX, as it offers really great performance improvements and a few bugfixes.

Distributors benefit:
They sometimes like to stick to a certain driver version or offer updated drivers.

While a non-modularized model might make the life of developers a bit easier (but I'm not even sure about that regarding hardware drivers), it makes the life of users and distributors harder - a full update of X can break all kinds of stuff, and history has shown that's not only a theory.
Also, API/ABI stability might be handled more sloppy than today eventually, which is a bad thing especially for blobs.

[plonoma]

This de modularization is a very stupid idea.
Somebody should really persuade Keith to nt do this kind of stuff.

Making life easier for developers? Is he kidding.
e.g. A random graphic driver developer: "Every time I want to compile the driver I'm working on. I'll have to compile the whole x server. This costs me a lot of time."

easier? Not exactly

All drivers should be de modularized. Everything that's not a driver can go de modularized with the x server for my part. But really for the drivers, come on, what is he thinking