X server 1.6 release schedule

[Paulo César Pereira de Andrade]

> I volunteered to manage an X server 1.6 release, tentatively scheduled
> for the end of the year (yes, this year, 2008). This release will
> include DRI2 and RandR 1.3 support. I'd like to know how much of the new
> Xinput stuff will be ready in time.

  Hi Keith,

  First, thanks for doing it.

  I understand that people should rely on tarballs available at
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual, but given that
"packages" like X Server, libdrm and mesa have "stable branches",
I would like to see those more used, and people being able to
clone those repositories and building from source, from the
stable branches.
  Several distros (Mandriva is one) did not yet update from 1.4 to
1.5. Since I want to believe that 1.5 to 1.6 will not have major abi
changes, this could be a good oportunity for distros to get back in
sync with Xorg.

  I guess it will be required to skip
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14730 again.
I had that patch working for X Server 1.4 one year ago, and for
git master before 1.5 was "branched". But did not test it much
recently. Anyway, it probably should stay this way, as the patch would
be more useful when/if Xorg started using a sdk, with a compromise on
backwards compatibility. But at the rate new features are being added,
this is unlikely soon :-) Also by only exporting symbols that really
should be visible, you get a compromise.
  Due to the large amount of changes, this is also something that will
cause potential "personal" conflicts, if you add patches to
"someone else's" package. So, instead of changing configure.ac's and
Makefile.am's, maybe make it modify XORG_CFLAGS; if the X Server
can compile and become functional with -fvisibility, there is no
reason drivers won't; only libraries of course needs special handling,
and in most cases, just mark as weak duplicated symbols, and make sure
the X Server is exporting it's version of the symbol.

> Here's a proposed schedule of events:
>
> Cut a release branch, do a -RC1 release:	11/24
>
> Track remaining work on scheduled features,
> cherry-picking commits from master. Cut -RC2	12/8
>
> Stop accepting new code, focus on bug fixing.
> Cut -RC3					12/22
>
> Update documentation, mark known bugs, build
> packages and ship final	bits.			1/5
>
> After -RC1, all commits to the branch must go through the 1.6 proposed
> commits page:
>
> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Server16Branch
>
> If you've got merges you'd like to have included, instead of just a
> patch or two, please post the repository and branch name. I'll pull
> stuff across and push to the branch.
>
> --
> keith.packard at intel.com
> _______________________________________________

Paulo