[forum] Notes from a teleconference held 2003-3-27

[Jens Owen]

Michel,

You're bring in issues that effect more than just the X development 
community here, so I'm copying the DRI and Mesa developers.

Michel Dänzer wrote:
> On Don, 2003-04-03 at 22:03, Alan Cox wrote: 
> 
>>> From the DRI people's point of view, it leads to more work as we'd want our 
>>>drivers to work with both trees -- but that's pretty much life, and we'll have 
>>>to do what we can to minimize the effects on us.
>>
>>Perhaps a test of Keith's theory is that DRI should be able to be -part-
>>of not just working with his tree.
> 
> 
> I think we should first discuss (more) the pros and cons of folding the
> DRI tree into other trees. I do find the potential benefits (for merges
> in particular) compelling, but there's e.g. the danger of making it harder
> to get it integrated with other components like e.g. DirectFB or other 
> OpenGL implementations.
> 
> 

Folding the X specific work into an X project makes alot of sense from a 
technical perspective.  My biggest concern would be losing developer 
momentum by removing this work from a developer friendly project like 
the DRI.

The Mesa specific parts and the supporting kernel driver parts could be 
pushed into the Mesa tree (this has already been done for the embedded 
branch).  Currently, the Mesa project is very focused on the API and the 
full software stack that supports that API in a wide range of windowing 
environments while the DRI project is focused on hardware acceleration 
in the X environment.  It's technically feasible to transition the 
development of the Mesa hardware drivers (currently done in DRI) to the 
Mesa project.  However, we still need to worry about developer momentum 
as two focuses would now be in the Mesa project (API and 3D HW).

I think the following block diagram illustrates the key areas of 3D 
development focus, and the transition that's being suggested:


Now:     Mesa Tree -----> DRI Tree -----> XFree86 Tree
          - API Focus      - 3D HW Focus   - Complete Window System Focus
                           - X/3D
                             Integration

Possible
Future:  Mesa Tree -----+--> XFree86 Tree
          - API Focus    |    - X/3D Integration
          - 3D HW Focus  |    - Complete Window System Focus
                         |
                         +--> Alternate X Tree
                         |    - Duplicate X/3D Integration
                         |    - Possibly more 3D developer
                         |      friendly, who knows?
                         |
                         +--> FBDev Subset
                         |    - FBDev/3D Integration
                         |    - Embedded Focus
                         |
                         +--> DirectFB
                         |    - DFB/3D Integration
                         V
              Other Window Systems:
              DirectFB, WGL, AGL and
              new ones that haven't
              been invented, yet.


I would like to hear the concerns from the developers that support the 
API, 3D HW and X/3D Integration before considering any kind of 
transition.  IMHO, supporting the community of open source developers 
that make 3D happen is much more important than control over any one 
project.

-- 
                                /\
          Jens Owen            /  \/\ _
   jens@tungstengraphics.com  /    \ \ \   Steamboat Springs, Colorado