[Mesa-dev] Mesa 18.0.0 release plan

[Emil Velikov]

On 16 January 2018 at 21:57, Kenneth Graunke <kenneth at whitecape.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 16, 2018 11:18:13 AM PST Emil Velikov wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> As you've know the Mesa 18.0.0 release plan has been available for a while
>> on the mesa3d.org website [1].
>>
>> In case you've missed it here it is:
>>
>>  Jan 19 2018 - Feature freeze/Release candidate 1
>>  Jan 26 2018 - Release candidate 2
>>  Feb 02 2018 - Release candidate 3
>>  Feb 09 2018 - Release candidate 4/final release
>>
>> This gives us half a week until the branch point.
>>
>> As this is shorter notice than usual, I'm open to adjusting the schedule by a
>> week. Do let me know ASAP, if we should go that route.
>>
>> As always - do list features/sets that you'd like to see merged. Thus we can
>> all have a clear idea and prioritise accordingly.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Emil
>>
>> [1] https://www.mesa3d.org/release-calendar.html
>
> A few observations and some questions...
>
> Although 17.3 was branched in late October, 17.3.0 wasn't released until
> December 8th - about 6 weeks ago.  17.3.x also shipped with a pretty
> catastrophic DRI3 bug that caused tons of applications to segfault,
> which was fixed by 897c54d522ab960a879b763a15e489f630c491ee, but that
> hasn't yet made it into a shipping 17.3.x release.  Arguably, I think
> 17.3.3 is going to be the first usable 17.3.x release.
>
> So...is it too early to branch for 18.0?
>
Perhaps. The way I try to look at it is the volume of development as
opposed to when bug X or Y is fixed.
Sadly bugs never end, yet users can evaluate which ones they can live
with. At least temporarily.

I realise it sounds mean/etc. but such is reality.

> - Have distros picked up 17.3.x yet?
Quick and dirty check says yes*

Gentoo   yes 17.3.1 as testing;    17.2.7 as stable
Debian   yes 17.3.2 in unstable;   13.0.6 in stable
Ubuntu   no  17.2.4 in bionic;     17.2.2 in artful <<< The exception
openSUSE yes 17.3.2 in Tumbleweed; 17.0.5 Leap 42.3
Fedora   yes 17.3.0 in Rawhide,    17.2.4 FC27
Arch     yes 17.3.2

> - Is there anything in master that people are excited about shipping?

Here's a quick list. Pretty sure people will fancy some bits.

- GL/GLES
GL 4.3 and GLES 3.1 on r600/evergreen+
Disk cache support for i965 (disabled by default)
ARB_get_program_binary with 1 format on i965 \o/

- GLX/EGL
GLX_ARB_context_flush_control
EGL_KHR_context_flush_control
EGL_IMG_context_priority for freedreno
EGL_EXT_pixel_format_float, with 0 advertised float formats :-\

- Vulkan ANV
VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf
Alpha Gen 10 support

- Vulkan RADV
VK_KHR_external_fence*
VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2
VK_EXT_discard_rectangles
VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf
VK_AMD_shader_info

- Vulkan common
Generic DRI_PRIME support (not 100% sure if that one landed yet)

- Initial VC5 support
Simulator only

> - There are about 2 months of work since the 17.3.x branch point
>   (half of October, all of November, about half of December because
>   so many people were on holidays).
>
Indeed, commit count reflects that ~2.2k for 18.0 with ~2.5k for 17.3.
Yet again, numbers always go up and down through the year. Be that
winter festivities, (late) summer vacations, other.

> I'm wondering if a mid-February branch point and March release would
> make more sense, just to space them out.  Then again, I've also
> suggested doing 3 releases a year in the past, since I thought they were
> too close together.  So, if people disagree, I'm totally fine with that.
>
I think this is _the_ question. Might be worth bringing up to
mesa-maintainers@ so that distro people can (find easier and) chip-in.

Personally I'm fine with either three or four releases. As mentioned
by Nicolai, using 3 will make it a bit harder to fit around
distribution schedules though.

Thanks
Emil