vmware_drv broken? (missing letters in emacs, etc.)

[Gordon Ross]

After updating to Xorg server 1.14.7 (from something much older) I'm
seeing letters disappear (become blank background) and reappear,
typically when the cursor is moving over them and flashing.
This is on an OpenIndiana.org system running under vmware, and using
the vmware_drv para-virtual driver.

To help rule things out, I tried running with vmware_drv temporarily
remove, and indeed this problem goes away (though I lose the ability
to run at the host's best resolution, etc.)

Looking a little at the latest vmware_drv code (13.1.0) in:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-vmware/
I've become suspicious that it's "damage" handling may be faulty, or
at least out of date with current Xorg code.

It appears that this driver uses a queue of drawing requests in the VM
guest that are acted upon asynchronously by the VM host.  That makes
this driver similar to an accelerated graphics chip
that does it's work asynchronously.  However, this driver uses only
the old DamageDamageRegion() interface to report "damage".  I took a
whack at making this driver use DamageRegionAppend and
DamageRegionProcessPending (after it flushes it's request queue) but
the problem with missing letters continues.

Am I  on the wrong track?  Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Gordon
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