Re: new X11 project

Robert, good day.

Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 02:33:26PM -0500, Robert Noland wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-11-07 at 13:52 -0500, Chuck Robey wrote:
> > It's discussing a new X11 project, going by the name Wayland, a RedHat  
> > project.  Among it's primary goals is to simplify the server, and  
> > since making things simpler (and hence more reliable) has been a  
> > lifelong primary goal of mine, I'm listening.  My goal here, beyond  
> > trying to be helpful in pointing out something clearly important, is  
> > to find out of anyone has done any research with a mind towards  
> > finding out the ultimate compatibility between FreeBSD and this new  
> > Wayland.  I'm always worried that a Linux-person is going to  
> > "innocently" write something that requires us to become a Linux  
> > lookalike.
> 
> I haven't spoken to krh about it, but the userland component likely
> won't be all that difficult to port.  The more complex issue is all the
> back-end kernel support that will be needed.

Do you really think that it is really needed to include all modesetting
stuff to the FreeBSD kernel?  What's wrong with the current
implementation for the, say, Radeon userland drivers in this respect?

AtomBIOS and company needs not to be in the kernel.  Sure, DRM is
already a part of the kernel, but it is the "real" need -- physical
access to the hardware (with the more-or-less fast response) is needed.
But what is the point in having the pure userland code in the kernel?

I understand that Wayland has only 3000+ lines of code, but I feel
that the complexity is just moved to the other places.  Am I missing
something?

> GEM is on my list to do sooner rather than later, but I haven't
> gotten it going yet.

I feel that GEM is rather useful for the DRM layer itself?  At least
it is that it was written for...
-- 
Eygene
 _                ___       _.--.   #
 \`.|\..----...-'`   `-._.-'_.-'`   #  Remember that it is hard
 /  ' `         ,       __.--'      #  to read the on-line manual   
 )/' _/     \   `-_,   /            #  while single-stepping the kernel.
 `-'" `"\_  ,_.-;_.-\_ ',  fsc/as   #
     _.-'_./   {_.'   ; /           #    -- FreeBSD Developers handbook 
    {_.-``-'         {_/            #