Wiki / Documentation cleanup and X development IRC channel [Was Re: Status of xserver/debrix/modular tree?]

[Shawn Starr]

> The Xserver wiki page says the project is dead, pointing
> users to Debrix.  The link to Debrix, however, has
> disappeared from FreeDesktop's Software directory and
> the Arch repository doesn't work any more.

As discused on #freedesktop:

Please send me any broken Links on the Wiki page.  I'm going to help out by 
starting to clean up the pages and add more information about how people can 
get involved.

There really is a need for people, of the people working on Xorg, they are all 
busy coding. They don't have much time to work on the wiki page(s), 
documentation updates and such.

As for documentation, I really like what the GNOME/KDE people are doing in 
terms of documenting the X APIs in a nice, clean stylized web page layout. If 
we can make documentation that has examples of how to use the different 
libraries we can attract more people.

A link mentioned on #freedesktop is a very good starting point:

http://www.iecn.u-nancy.fr/~torri/files/xcb/doc/index.html

Having documentation like this for the rest of X would seriously make 
understanding the X server and its libraries much easier.

What does everyone think?

Of note:

If you want to do/help with development with X, come to irc.freenode.net:

#xorg-devel - Primary development of X [libraries, Xserver, and such]
#xorg - User help getting Xorg working

IRC is where most OSS projects - including Linux - get done.

> 
> Both Linus Torvalds and Mark Mitchell periodically write
> status updates of some kind to keep people focused on
> a common goal.  The KDE and Mozilla projects publish
> long-term plans.

The problem with this right now is since Xorg is going modular, we need people 
to sign up to take responsibility of the various components. But for that to 
happen, people need to understand what they are going to take maintainership 
of.  I don't know how that would work since the xlibs (Xrender, Xcursor, 
Xrandr, Xss and such) may be constantly changing. When a new X release comes 
out, each of the various modular libraries would be captured for a new X 
Window System release.  There would need a lot of coordination between each 
Release Manager/Maintainer to make sure everything would be ready for a new X 
release.
 
> Never seen anything similar for the Xorg family of
> projects.  It's not even clear what the management
> roles are and who is in charge for them.
> 
> I know Xorg is based on volunteer work.  All OSS
> projects are.  I might have overseen something, but
> in order to be successful and attract more developers,
> Xorg appears to need more coordination/PR work.

Come help then,  nurture the baby and it will grow :-)

> -- 
>   // Bernardo Innocenti - Develer S.r.l., R&D dept.
> \X/  http://www.develer.com/
>