Xserver driver merging pros & cons

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:50:45AM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > > Speaking as a radeon driver developer, merging the driver into the
> > > server tree would be unworkable at this point because since the "new
> > > development model" has been in effect, it's not possible to get even
> > > trivial changes into the server tree without a ridiculous amount of
> > > time/effort.
> > 
> > Can you be more specific?  When we were discussing this yesterday, it
> > seemed like the "new development model" was working and that it was no
> > longer a barrier to this problem.
> 
> Try getting a review for a non-sexy change, e.g. in EXA. And even in
> other areas, if it takes more time/effort to get in a bugfix than to fix
> the bug in the first place, why should one bother? I'm only bothering
> anymore for bugs that affect users really badly.
> 
> Generally there's been too many useful patches languishing indefinitely
> due to the unrealistic process. Alex said you had slides at XDC showing
> that the number of changes went down for each recent xserver release.
> That matches my impression that the new process has been killing
> momentum, instead of attracting new momentum as had been promised.

We decided on a process because we hoped it was useful. We can change the
process if it isn't working or not working well enough for you.

The one thing it has achieved is timely and stable releases though this may
also be influenced by the big rewrites having stopped after 1.7. If you have
any ideas for how to improve the current process but keep timely releases
and a stable X server, I'm certainly interested.
 
Cheers,
  Peter