Re: X.org plans for the squeeze cycle
[other xsf members, feel free to chime in if I'm forgetting something or
saying something stupid :)]
On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 14:41:24 +0200, Marc Brockschmidt wrote:
> * Which major upstream releases of X.org are expected in the next two
> years? Which of those are material for Debian stable, which might be a bit
> flaky?
>
X.org release management is notoriously pretty bad. Releases often slip
by months, and bugs in .0 server releases aren't unheard of. See also
http://www.openbsd.org/papers/asiabsdcon2009-release_engineering/mgp00009.html
Anyway, there's no schedule for 1.7 to my knowledge, let alone for the
subsequent releases. I'd guess server 1.7 (and X.Org 7.5) will come
before the end of the year, though, so that seems like a good candidate
for a squeeze release in 2010.
FWIW, the pattern so far looks like:
Apr 19 2007 xorg-server-1.3.0.0.tar.gz
Sep 6 2007 xorg-server-1.4.tar.gz
Jun 10 2008 xorg-server-1.4.1.tar.gz
Jun 11 2008 xorg-server-1.4.2.tar.gz
Sep 3 2008 xorg-server-1.5.0.tar.gz
Sep 23 2008 xorg-server-1.5.1.tar.gz
Oct 10 2008 xorg-server-1.5.2.tar.gz
Nov 5 2008 xorg-server-1.5.3.tar.gz
Feb 25 12:19 xorg-server-1.6.0.tar.gz
Apr 14 13:09 xorg-server-1.6.1.tar.gz
Jul 7 16:39 xorg-server-1.6.2.tar.gz
Jul 31 23:42 xorg-server-1.6.3.tar.gz
> * How much time do you usually need from a new upstream release of X.org
> to a stable Debian package in unstable?
>
I'd say 6 months to a year from a .0 server to something we can ship in
stable. Depending if RedHat/Fedora are shipping it too and thus fixing
most bugs for us.
> * How many "big" transitions will the upcoming changes cause? When should those
> happen? Can we do something to make them easier?
>
Lately the big problems were related to the stability of the intel
driver, which went through several big changes (full modesetting in the
driver instead of using the bios, then switch of acceleration
architecture to EXA, then a kernel memory manager, then kernel mode
setting, and I'm probably forgetting some). Hopefully most of that is
over, and we can migrate it to testing soon along with the rest of the X
stack.
Kernel mode setting for the radeon driver is being worked on, will be in
staging in the 2.6.31 kernel, so hopefully we can ship that stack with
squeeze. The nouveau driver is also lining up for inclusion in the
kernel (maybe in staging in 2.6.32?) so it'd be really great to be able
to ship that in the release, too.
Some of that depends on having enough people available to package new
releases, triage/forward bugs, and test the new stuff. I won't be able
to do much of that myself in the foreseeable future.
One thing that might cause some minor disruption in sid is the moving
around of headers between libxext and x11proto-xext
(http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg-announce/2009-August/000953.html).
Fedora already went through that, though, and the change should be
mostly invisible to clients.
Cheers,
Julien
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