[Mesa-dev] forking shared intel directory?

[Kenneth Graunke]

On 06/21/2013 01:25 PM, Patrick Baggett wrote:
> I'm not a developer, but I like to keep up with the drivers that I have
> hardware for. Please take my opinions with a grain of salt.
>
> When you say you break i915 more than you improve it, do you mean to say
> that it is difficult to improve !i915 without breaking i915 and
> therefore to improve development speed, it should be forked OR that i915
> doesn't receive enough testing / have maintainers who can resolve the
> issues and so it burdens other developers to fix i915 and hence slows
> development?
>
> The reason I ask if because if it is #2, then it sounds like you should
> be looking for someone to volunteer as the official i915 maintainer [and
> if none, then fork], but if it is #1, then maintainer or not, it will
> slow down your efforts.

Mostly the former...i915c already supports everything the hardware can 
do, while we're continually adding new features to i965+ (well, mostly 
gen6+).  Things like HiZ, fast color clears, and ETC texture compression 
support affect the common miptree code, but they do nothing for i915 
class hardware...there's only a potential downside of accidental breakage.

The latter is true as well.  Unfortunately, community work is hampered 
by the fact that Intel hasn't released public documentation for i915 
class hardware.  From time to time we've tried to find and motivate the 
right people to make that happen, but it hasn't yet.  Most people in the 
community are also more interested in working on the i915g driver.

--Ken