Re: Intel Haswell support - Any updates?

Am Thu, 17 Sep 2015 19:00:15 +0200
Jean-Sébastien Pédron <dumbbell_at_FreeBSD.org> schrieb:

> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'm very sorry I didn't communicate at all on the i915 update project.
> 
> So here is a status update: since this morning, the driver builds fine.
> I'm currently attending the XDC (X.Org Developers Conference) and don't
> have an Intel laptop to test with me. However, Johannes Dieterich (also
> attending the conference) offerred his help, so we will do that today.
> 
> Obviously, do not expect something stable in the coming couple days.
> Thank you for your patience :)
> 
> To answer various questions in this thread:
> 
> Why does it take so much time to update? Once Konstantin committed his
> i915 update, I was busy with non-FreeBSD activities until last July,
> when I slowly started back to work on i915. My goal is to reduce the
> diff with Linux as much as possible. But, as opposed to OpenBSD and
> DragonFlyBSD, we do not use a Linux compatibility layer which would
> dramatically ease our life.

My concerns are speed and performance. Isn't any kind of layer consuming performance -
sometimes worse, sometimes negligible. But anyway, HPC isn't a FreeBSD domain, so ...

> 
> This layer exists for the OFED/Infiniband drivers: we are almost ready
> to move it to a central place, so we can use it in the near future in
> the DRM subsystem.

it would be nice to see a performance comparison between the "original" in Linux and then
the layered in freeBSD ...

> 
> Another problem I will fix in the near future is the method I used: I
> worked on a giant patch instead of doing several incremental commits.
> This is unfriendly for external contributors and hard to review.
> DragonFly got that right for instance.
> 
> Now about other related tasks:
>     o  A Mesa update will be committed Real Soon Now™. It will unlock
>        GLAMOR and OpenCL support.

This to hear is like a symphony to my ears ...

>     o  Once Mesa is updated, we can update xserver to 1.17.2. xserver
>        1.18 RC 1 works fine (at least for me :). It should be released
>        for Halloween.

... and even better ;-)

>     o  Wayland. The problem is NOT the output side of the graphics
>        stack: it is the input part. We miss evdev (ported as a GSoC,
>        waiting for review and commit), we miss udev, we miss libinput.
>        This item deserves a dedicated email.

One "advantage" of the Berkeley derived UNIXes is that they did not cover the mess Linux
was in its first years - and, from my personal experiences with security rleated
govermental stuff - still is!

The spoken of facilities are "generic" or are they Linux-unique and have to be adopted
for FreeBSD?

> 
> Sorry, it's a bit short for such a large topic. It's difficult to expand
> more during a conference :)
>