Let me toss in my 2 cents.
The problem is that DRI development has never reached critical mass in the
open source world. There was a time when there were quite a few developers
working on DRI related projects a PI or VA but much of the design
discussions
were private and people couldn't eaves drop on the 'experts'. A
combination
of eaves dropping and browsing through code is how many people get up to
speed on open source projects. This didn't happen with DRI so the same
experts of 2 years ago are the same experts today except that many of those
experts are now on to other projects.
To make the problem worse is DRI, XFree86, and 3D drivers is there is a
very steep learning curve, documentation is limited, out dated or simply
non-existant and searching aimlessly through megabytes and megabytes of
source code is a slow, tedious and frustrating process that quickly results
in a developer looking for more interesting projects. Every month someone
comes along the DRI mailing list, mentions that they are interested in doing
work, and then shortly later dissappears. Every time that happens that is
another developer gone on to another project that interests them because
they
couldn't get over the learning curve and another developer lost to the DRI
project.
The solution is that we need a way to get the information flowing between
the
handful of DRI experts and the people who want to become DRI experts. Once
information starts flowing and people start getting over the learning curve
and staying a DRI developer then the eaves dropping will occur, there will
be
many more knowledgeable people to answer the newbie questions and DRI will
reach critical mass and the experts can spend their time working on the
complex issues.
So, the question is how to we get that process going. As a suggestion,
maybe
a weekly IRC meeting would help where new developers can ask the experts,
and
each other, questions about DRI, XFree or 3D graphics. I am sure it would
be
much easier for Darryl, Paul, or any of the other DRI experts to allocate an
hour or so a week to participate in an IRC chat as opposed to monitoring and
answering mailing list messages. It would allow the new developers to more
quickly get answers to their questions. Also, the IRC logs could be posted
on the DRI web site. New developers are far more likely to read an IRC log
than scan through months and months of mailing list archives. Honestly, I
suspect no one ever reads mailing lists archives to get general information.
People only search them to see if someone else experienced a very specific
problem and might have a solution.
Anyway, just a thought.
David
>From: Daryll Strauss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [Dri-devel] DRM/DRI porting guide?
>Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:56:03 -0800
>
>On Thu, Jan 17, 2002 at 02:40:15AM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > Okay, sorry, I just had to laugh. Not your fault, I admit that. You are
>as innocent as I used to be.
> >
> > Here's the deal bro:
>
>Now I'm going to turn this around a bit. You've already seen the answers
>from most of us. We're still here, but we're busy with other projects,
>and our time is limited. We're all still reading the list and posting
>when it seems appropriate.
>
>It's hard work writing docs. It's not a lot of fun (particularly for a
>developer) to spend time writing docs.
>
>It is much easier to answer questions than it is to write docs. If
>someone takes the initiative to do some digging and ask questions we're
>much more likely to respond? Why? Because the scope they're asking for
>is more limited. Because they've shown their invested in the
>project. You'll find that when you work on open source projects that
>lots of people will ask you to give of your time and very few will
>contribute on their own.
>
>A good starting point would be to dig through the archives of this list
>and collect what's there. It would have a lot of holes, but it would be
>a good place to start. I realize it's a pain in the ass, but it's a
>start. Has anyone done that? No.
>
>I agree with you that if more modern up-to-date docs were available it
>would be easier for other developers to contribute. Pull together what's
>on the list already. Ask questions.
>
>Another reasonable complaint is that you need to download too much code
>and it takes too long to build all of X. Not everyone has fast machines
>and lots of bandwidth. Since the client side OpenGL doesn't change much,
>wouldn't it be nice to have a way to compile that separately, so it is
>smaller and faster? Yep. Someone do it.
>
>I know I've written this same piece to the list multiple times, but in
>order to be more proactive, here's a place to start. All OpenGL drivers
>are made up of 3 parts:
>
>A DRI aware 2D driver which lives in
> xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/...
>usually in a file *_dri.{c.h}
>
>A DRI aware 3D driver based on Mesa which lives in
> xc/lib/GL/mesa/src/drv/...
>
>A kernel module which lives in
> xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/drm/linux
>
>Go start digging in those directories and asking questions.
>
>I've given a couple presentations on the DRI, so maybe I can find one of
>those to post as well.
>
>Regarding CVS access, Brian, I get email from people, and I talk to
>those people that have shown some investment. I've only added one or two
>people. My stock answer when asked is that you should submit a patch or
>two before we give access. Now one has. For the few people that have
>shown some code or even a good understanding, they've turned me down
>saying they're too busy.
>
> - |Daryll
>
>
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