xorg/ X11R68ReleasePlan

The X.Org Foundation X11R6.8 Release Plan

Table of Contents

  1. Table of Contents
  2. Overview
  3. New Features
  4. Known bugs/issues
  5. Deadlines
  6. Success Criteria
  7. Open Questions
  8. Task List

Overview

The X.Org Foundation is preparing a new release of the X Window System. This document covers the basic information about the release, including the new features, known bugs/issues, deadlines, success criteria, open questions and tasks. As new features are added or new information becomes available this page will be updated with the latest release information.

The bugzilla entry for this release is here.

The current status of this release is on X11R68ReleaseStatus.

Screen shots of this technology working.

New Features

Highlights of features already in CVS

The following features are already included in the X.Org CVS tree on Freedesktop.Org

  1. FreeType2 updated to v2.1.8
  2. Retire XTT font module and FreeType1 (FreeType2 subsumes this functionality)
  3. Retire old PS Type1 font rasterizer (except for CID font usage) since the FreeType2 rasterizer now handles PS Type1 (*.pfa, *.pfb)
  4. Xprint updates
    • Integrated various fixes from xprint.mozdev.org (more or less the whole codebase has been merged)
    • Integrated various fixes from Sun Microsystems
    • OpenGL is now supported for printing
    • New set of maintenance tools for the Xprint server (xplsprinters, xprehashprinterlist, etc.)
    • Added new XprintUtils client library to make the usage off Xprint easier
    • Various other features and fixes integrated
  5. Athena toolkit now has print support (XawPrintShell)
  6. Various applications/tools like xman, xedit, xlogo, etc. now have print support
  7. Render implementation fixes (see ChangeLog 2004-05-11 entry)
  8. Updated x86emu and resynced with upstream at Scitech
  9. Updated Mesa and DRI from upstream sources
    • More OpenGL extensions
    • MergedFB for Radeon (Dualhead DRI support on these cards)
    • Many GLX fixes
    • Working SiS DRI driver
    • Major Radeon and R200 DRI driver updates
    • fbconfigs support
    • Beginnings of pbuffer support (indirect only, and only in specific circumstances).
    • Merge Mach64 DRI support (Eric Anholt, July 23)
  10. Updated SiS driver
  11. Render acceleration for ATI's R100 and R200-series cards
  12. DMX (Distributed Multihead X)
  13. MMX Render acceleration
  14. XFixes extension
    • General agreement that this extension is ready
    • RegionExpand code needs to be integrated (Keith Packard)
  15. Damage extension
    • General agreement that this extension is ready
    • See "background `` None" Composite issue below for potential dependency
  16. Infrastructure for rotation support in drivers
    • See this e-mail for more info
  17. Composite extension
    • Mixed opinion that this extension is ready
    • background “None” issue not yet resolved (see this e-mail for more info)
    • Need XAA wrappers to avoid ABI change (Sun)
    • Perhaps hold off including this extension (see "Open Questions" below for more discussion)
      • Default off -- Main.?JimGettys suggested and everyone agreed
      • Create a module for Composite?
    • New fields in pixmap will not cause an ABI problem -- verify
    • Main.?EricAnholt, Main.EgbertEich, Main.StuartKreitman and Main.?DeronJohnson will look into XAA wrapper status
  18. XEvIE (X Event Interception Extension)
    • First implementation of an extension to intercept core keyboard and pointing device input
    • Allows consumation, modification or synthesis of input events before these are sent to their final destination (i.e., interested clients)
    • Required by the Gnome accessibility project
    • Experimental -- default off
  19. Various bug fixes/enhancements
    • See xc/ChangeLog file for list
    • Can't the ChangeLog be automatically generated from the cvs logs?
    • Should we explicitly list the bugzilla entries that have been fixed in this release? (A possibility is to add a query that will list all entries fixed for this release -S�ren)
  20. New Trapezoid specification for Render
    • Respecify Render to include only 'normal' traps
    • Allow backward compatibility but internally covert to new format
    • See this e-mail for more info
  21. New Trapezoid implementation for Render
    • Alternate implementation designed but not yet implemented
    • See this e-mail for more info
  22. Software mouse cursor is now based on the Damage extension
  23. A new keyboard driver is enabled by default. The old driver is disabled unless explicitly compiled in by defining the macro USE_DEPRECATED_KEYBOARD_DRIVER
  24. Extensions can be enabled/disabled from the configuration file and from the command line (Kevin Martin, July 31).

Driver updates

  1. SiS driver updates include
    • output device hotplugging
    • lots of fixes for 661, 741, 760
    • extended interface for SiSCtrl
    • extended LCD handling (allow more modes)
    • HDTV support (480p, 480i, 720p. 1080i; 315/330 series)
    • Added video blitter Xv adapter (315/330 series)
    • extended RENDER acceleration
  2. Radeon driver updates:
    • Merged Framebuffer support (dualhead with DRI)
    • ?DynamicClocks option (reduced power usage)
    • Render acceleration (r100, r200 chips only)
    • Support for new ATI chips (R420/M18, R423, RV370/M22, RV380/M24, RS300)
    • DRI support for IGP chips
    • Xv gamma correction
    • Updated 3D drivers
    • Many other small fixes
  3. Neomagic driver updates
    • Support for Xv on pre-nm2160 chips
    • Pseudocolor overlay mode
    • Improved support for lowres double scan modes
  4. MGA driver updates
    • Support for DDC and DPMS on second head on G400
    • Updated 3D driver
  5. i810 driver updates
    • Dualhead support (i830+)
    • i915 support
    • New 3D driver (i830+)
  6. Savage driver updates
    • Pseudocolor overlay mode
  7. S3 driver updates
    • Support for additional IBM RAMDACS
  8. Chips driver update
    • Improved BE support

Proposed Features

All of the proposed features are now included in the source tree.

People

The following people have in some way contributed to the release:

  1. Egbert Eich
  2. Keith Packard
  3. Roland Mainz
  4. Alan Coopersmith
  5. Russ Blaine
  6. Alexander Gottwald
  7. Alan Hourihane
  8. Chisato Yamauchi
  9. Eric Anholt
  10. Nolan Leake
  11. Stefan Dirsch
  12. Rik Faith
  13. Daniel Berrange
  14. Matthieu Herrb
  15. John Heasley
  16. Ryan Underwood
  17. Alex Deucher
  18. Ty Sarna
  19. Torrey T Lyons Darwin
  20. Stuart Kreitman
  21. Kevin E. Martin
  22. Greg Parker (Input support on XDarwin)
  23. John Harper (XDarwin)
  24. Adam Jackson
  25. Peter Kunzman
  26. Aaron Plattner
  27. Chisato Yamauchi
  28. Michel Daenzer
  29. Kristian H�gsberg
  30. S�ren Sandmann
  31. Owen Taylor
  32. Mike A. Harris
  33. Ivan Kokshaysky
  34. Bryan Stine
  35. Guy Martin
  36. Paul Anderson
  37. Yu Shao
  38. David Dawes
  39. Harold L. Hunt II
  40. Andreas Luik
  41. Travis Tilley
  42. Ryan Lortie
  43. Ryan Breen
  44. Deron Johnson
  45. Ronny Vindenes
  46. Jim Gettys and many more.

Work-in-progress Features

The following features will not be included in the release:

  1. TrueType wrappers for bitmap fonts
    • Wrappers convert .BDF fonts into .TTF files
    • Huge disk space savings, eliminate font compilation step and improved performance
    • See this e-mail for more info
  2. XEvIE (X Event Interception Extension) Version 1.1
    • modifications for redirection of input events to composited windows
    • Update to 1.1 version, multiple client support -- where is this version currently?
    • Security fixes suggsted by Alan Coopersmith

Known bugs/issues

The following are bugs that are either known or suspected to exist in the current X.Org CVS tree or are issues that need to be investigated before the release:

  • Segfault when mixing new DRI and old libGL (bugzilla entry)
  • Move non-MMX improvements from kdrive fb code over to X.Org tree
  • Possibly disable XAA Render acceleration until a working hook exists (Main.?EricAnholt)
    • Not sure this is a good idea to disable it -- more discussion is needed
  • DRI code in X.Org tree is broken on big endian machines
  • Radeon driver not converted to use t_vertex yet (need to verify)
  • Non-TCL drivers broken by Mesa changes (image and bugzilla entry)
  • Move to new modularized kbd keyboard driver, deprecate the legacy driver and do not compile legacy driver by default (bugzilla entry)
  • Sync up with externally maintained projects
  • Upgrade fontconfig to v2.2.3 (???)
  • Integrated new items from XFree86 since split (???)
  • Modularization/auto-tooling effort will not have the necessary soak time for this release, so it will not be integrated at this time
  • Go through all current bugzilla entries to determine which ones should block this release and add them to the release bug entry
  • Eamon Walsh -- SE Linux/X security -- what is the current state?

Deadlines

  • 30 Jul 2004: Feature Freeze
  • 16 Aug 2004: Code Freeze
  • 03 Sep 2004: Release

The dates for this X.Org Foundation release were derived from the dates for the upcoming Red Hat and SUSE distribution releases. The schedule is very tight and there is little room for slippage, so in most cases, features will be cut in order to make the scheduled release date.

Success Criteria

See XorgReleaseStatus for the status of this release.

  1. Build tested on target platforms
  2. Install tested on target platforms
  3. Run tested on target platforms
  4. Passed VSW4 test suite on target platforms
  5. Passed OpenGL/Mesa/Glean tests on target 3D platforms
  6. ATI and NVIDIA binary modules work with the release

Notes:

  • Need list of target platforms: This will probably be a large matrix of OS's, platforms and drivers, and might be best split up along certain OS lines
  • Need list of volunteers for building and testing certain platforms
  • Put both of these on Wiki page for this release
  • VSW5 can be used for testing but results cannot be advertised (what about posting results to a mailing list for the release?)

Open Questions

  1. What should this release be called? X11R6.7.1, X11R6.8, X11R7, ... (X11R6.8 is the answer)

Task List

This section is for listing tasks that need to be completed before the release along with a person to which that task is assigned (if any). Tasks should not be deleted but rather tagged as "complete" as they are finished. This will allow us to track what tasks were required for this release and will be useful for future releases.

  1. Create release plan (Main.KevinEMartin -- complete)
  2. Create bugzilla entry for this release (Main.?JimGettys -- complete)
  3. Get fd.o tinderbox working (Main.?JimGettys -- complete)

-- Main.KevinEMartin - 16 Jul 2004
-- Main.?JimGettys - 13 Aug 2004 (minor update)