XFree86 Enters Wondrous World Of CVS

Quite a number of people have written with news from the USENIX annual technical conference. The news? The Xfree86 ^[?] folks have announced that XFree86 will now have CVS access.

Comments

For aspirin?

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Great! With access to CVS those XFree86 folk can work smarter, not harder through the use of prescription drugs.

(for those who don't understand, "CVS" is a huge drugstore chain in New England)
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Re:For aspirin?

[Sneakums]

For those who don't understand, CVS is the Concurrent Versioning System, a program for code change and change conflict management.

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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"

Re:For aspirin?

[be-fan]

Then sorry for accusing you of doing otherwise ;)

Re:For aspirin?

[be-fan]

Let's see, asking people to support an organization (BeUnited) whose works are all Open Source and a big help to the BeOS community. Yes of course that's trolling! (Of course, it's not Linux related so on /. it might not be too far from the truth.)

Thanks SourceForge

[dthable]

I would just like to extend a BIG thanks to VA Linux for setting up SourceForge. I know that I've used it for projects and a lot of open source projects are using it to gain access to a CVS tree.

Re:Thanks SourceForge

[DeadSea]

If you have an open source project written in java, you can get free cvs space at the Giant Java Tree.

In addition to cvs access the gjt will compile your program, create zip files of your program that can be downloaded. There is a Web based interface to the CVS (a servlet) which you can download and set up elsewhere if you wish.

There is also a CVS client written in java that I highly recommend for anybody that likes a bit of a GUI for using CVS. It works well under both windows and linux.

The whole thing is run by Tim Enders, and is simply amazing.

It's good to see X becomming more open

[richie123]

I think one of the most difficult things about X is that they rarely post any information on their web site, and their is no way to get an easy idea about the progress tht the X developers have made. I hope this begins to actract more developers, and improves the project a great deal.

Re:It's good to see X becomming more open

[bero-rh]

Really about time. Now all we need is some more people with write access - giving everyone read access is a very good first step (especially because distributors can finally start including post-release fixes!) - but I don't know if the (few) people with write access can keep track of the numerous patches this will generate.
(Not doubting their qualification of course, nobody can keep track of 200 patches/day!)

Re:It's good to see X becomming more open

[n1slacker]

I'd like to see you back up that 200 patches/day "fact". As someone who sees all the patches submitted to XFree86, I can assure you that it is nowhere near 200/day. Not even 200/month. Allow me to spoil a good argument with some real facts. For the month of May 2000, between 50 and 60 patches were submitted by registered XFree86 developers, and about 12 were submitted by others. As anyone can now see, the CHANGELOG post-4.0 has 370 entries right now, an average of 92 per month. Many of these are for things committed directly by developers with CVS commit access, and not submitted as patches.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when will it move into the 21st century and give us anti-aliasing? It's embarrasing to have Microsoft kick its ass for 10 years now.

Re:Great

[Sneakums]

I think you'll find that Windows has been anti-aliasing fonts for at most 5 years. The feature was introduced in the "Plus!" pack for Windows 95.

Acorn's Risc OS, on the other hand, has had anti-aliased outline fonts since approximately 1990.

X apps can anti-alias fonts on the client side; the fact that server-side support is missing is not the unmitigated disaster it appears to be.

--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"

Re:Great

[Dysan2k]

Sure.. but in 8-bit color, how do you decide what color palette to use? Are you going to remove colors for the Alpha-blending ability? Do you make anti-aliasing for only 15, 16, 24, and 32 bit palettes available? There are some concerns when it comes to that.

Now, I'd personally LOVE to see alpha-blending/anti-aliasing in X myself. But the X protocol could do with some changes itself (compression, ssX...) to improve the speed some. Granted it's fast, but I've seen a TON of posts on /. on how it could be made much better. Maybe now with CVS, I can duck my head in there and see how much of a fiasco it would be to implement such things. (

Of course, a setup program for X4.0 would REALLY be sweet at this point!h

Re:Great

[be-fan]

No it is an unmitigated disaster. The idea is that new features that can be server side, should be server side. It lowers memory usage (only one copy of anti-aliasing font libraries), it increases performance (especially over a network) and it lets apps automatically take advantage of the feature. BeOS is integrating a new true-type razterizer from Bitstream called FontFusion. Becauese all programs depend on the OS for font support, all programs will automatically take advantage of this feature. This is very important, if you want to retain a good user experience. Also, the fact that it is hard to add anti-aliased fonts is indicative of a larger problem in the system. I find it mind-boggling that the MIT guys decided to let if be extensible from a window manager point of view, but made the imaging model hard to extend. (Of course I doubt they thought people would still use the software in the year 2000!)

Re:Great

[Sneakums]

Risc OS does it better because it anti-aliases the small fonts, and not the big ones. Windows has it backwards.

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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"

Re:Great

[PurpleBob]

If you'd actually used xf86config, you wouldn't be considering it a setup program. :P

The XF86Config file that it spat out for me had to undergo lots of manual editing before it was usable.

But now I'm back on 3.3.6 (or is it 3.3.7?) anyway, because Mandrake mangled the Voodoo3 driver in their release of XFree86 4.0.
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No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

Re:Great

[Guy Harris]

Probably sooner than Microsoft will enter the 20th century and give us remote displays :)

Remote displays such as the Windows Terminal Server displays?

Re:Great

[Guy Harris]

Now when will it move into the 21st century and give us anti-aliasing?

Perhaps if and when the new rendering model discussed in this paper by Keith Packard, from USENIX 2000, is implemented; the paper suggests a number of enhancements to the X rendering model, including, but not limited to, anti-aliased fonts (alpha compositing; alpha-blending operations to improve, I infer, anti-aliasing of images; 32-bit coordinates with 8-bits of sub-pixel positioning; a fancier rendering primitive to draw objects out of trapezoids - see the article for a detailed explanation, I'm not a graphics expert; better text support, including access by the application to more information about the font such as pair kerning tables and raw outline data and metrics).

The paper doesn't say when this will happen, but I infer that this isn't just a wish list; Packard is, according to his page on the XFree86 Web site, working for SuSE on X.

CVS maintenance

[ahornby]

I use CVS daily and think its excellent. However there a number useful of patches with haven't made it into the main distribution literally for years.
e.g.

* alternate port number patch
* proxy tunneling patch
* LOCAL_BRANCH patch

Is anyone reading this involved in the development of CVS itself and able to comment on when these patches will make it in?

Re:CVS maintenance

[Khalid]

Open Avenue is now the official CVS maintainer ! they have recently bought Cyclic and promised to integrate many patchs floating around and develop CVS activly. They have even hired someone didacted entirely to this job.

Have a look at the new CVS home at www.cvshome.org

Re:CVS maintenance

[David Greene]

I do the same thing so that I can edit on multiple computers and keep all the copies in sync. It's really quite convenient.

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Re:CVS maintenance

[grammar nazi]

I agree with you David, but I will admit that Conor is right, too. I edit it on multiple computers. My advisor always wants to see the new changes to my thesis. CVS allows me to see what I changed since the last release and only give him the new stuff.

Although I haven't used it yet, I like the idea of going back to a previous version.

On a different note, I went to a Engineering Analysis workshop sponsored by HP, and I got the following idea: If you could design an easy to use Web interface for CVS (this alone wouldn't be too hard), then you could sell it to Engineering Dept. Managers and make millions. All the managers at this workshop a) didn't know anything about computers, b) have complicated multi-file engineering projects that their employees are working on (CAD files, Analysis files), and c) are willing to spend big $$$$$ on 'file management solutions'. The powers of CVS and a friendly interface would do the trick.

Re:CVS maintenance

[logicTrAp]

I keep my home directory in CVS, which kindof counts.

Haiku

[YASD]

Jump on board, hackers!
Oh, wait...read only...dammit
I clap with one hand

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What is the Sourceforge Home page ?

[Khalid]

They don't seem to have done that the traditional Sourceforge way !

I didn't find any trace of the Sourceforge Home page, or the Bug Tracking or the forums ! too bad, as those nices features will for sure make the development more open

Re:What is the Sourceforge Home page ?

[Tim C]

From the CVS access page:

"Public access is provided by a machine supplied and hosted by SourceForge and VA Linux Systems."

So, they're hosted at sourceforge already; the other nice features probably won't be long in coming :-)

Cheers,

Tim

Re:What is the Sourceforge Home page ?

[1010011010]

Assuming SourceForge is ever accessible. Have they been under DoS attacks recently, or what?

just one question...

[ywwg]

I don't want to start a download of the entire tree just to get a little bit of info... namely, have they fixed dga mouse support yet? This question gets asked day-in and day-out on the newsgroups by all of us l33t gamerz who need a smoother mouse to play quake under linux.

So, has it been fixed in CVS, or are you guys going to make me download it to find out? :P

Already doing it...

[otis wildflower]

... check the DRI distro, which contains the entire xf4.0 xc/ source tree IIRC.. I've been running latest builds out of that tree on my 2.4.0test1-ac22 built box using my G400M/32 and Quake3.. I get about 5-30 minutes of stable use in 'failsafe' ?dm mode..

Root around in the site, you'll find CVS instructions...

Your Working Boy,

Xfree open process.

[len(*jameson);]

This is an important step for the Xfree project, however other critical events really need to occur to help this worthy project become more open. For example, what is their policy going to be on CVS commit access? The easiest way to seperate the OSS projects is on the openness of their CVS commit access granting policies.

Just simple anonymous CVS access isn't going to make that huge a difference in the openness of the project.

Re:Xfree open process.

[IdiotBoy]

The easiest way to seperate the OSS projects is on the openness of their CVS commit access granting policies.

It might be the easiest way, but it is decidedly not the most relevant way. The openess of a project is reflected in its ease of access to the code, formal methods for patch submission (this doesn't have to mean you can commit your changes), access to the developer community and licensing terms.

Anonymous CVS access broadens the availability of up to date code, so enhances the openess siginifcantly.

makes the open group look like the closed group

[poopie]

So.. when does TOG decide to merge their changes with xfree86 and release x11r7?

or ... x12?

This makes my project easier

[felis_panthera]

I'm in the midst of coding a module for the Olympus Project from Mount Linux that will handle CVS administration. This project is meant to bring all administration for an entire *nix network to a single X desktop and this new development should make it easier. If anyone is interested in helping out on the mod_CVS that I am working on, it is located on Sourceforge under the name Cerberus. Good news all around I guess.

XFree86 opens mailing lists too

[keithp]

Along with CVS access, XFree86 has created new public mailing lists for development and support. Existing private lists will remain for NDA'd topics, but there aren't many of those anymore.

Re:I don't get it...

[HeUnique]

You cannot expect linux to move entirely to sourceforge since Linux is made from thousands of parts, each one developed by different people in different places etc... remember - Linux is NOT Windows!

Also, moving everything to sourceforge is definately NOT recommended. What happend if they'll have DoS tommorow? they don't have mirrors on the other coast, or outside U.S - so you actually suggest to put all the eggs in 1 place. Very bad idea (IMHO)

Re:I am a loser... yes u are

[Panaflex]

get gCVS..

pan

Re:Great: Be-boy

[be-fan]

I think maybe you confused my .sig as being part of my post? I was talking about XFree86. At least I think I was. Maybe I need to take my pills now...

Re:Stop the acronyms

[Wah]

No, no, no. LSD is for enlightenment. XTC/E is not to be used with a CVS, although it can be used with a LSD, IIRC, YMMV.
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Re:Oh god, die already, please, pretty please!

[be-fan]

If you consider the windows line to be the same OS, then you need help. Windows NT is a 32 bit microkernel OS with roots in VAX.
Windows 95 is a 24 bit (mix of 16 and 32 bit) OS with roots in DOS. One supports DirectX, the other doesn't. One has modern features like asynchronus I/O and the other doesn't. Also, it isn't exactly a great honor be the third fastest growing desktop OS, considering that #1 and #2 are hugely far ahdead of #3. Lastly, this isn't about Linux. If X dies now, the effects won't be felt too terribly (servers don't have much use for X, and Linux isn't on that many desktops yet.) If people wait longer to kill X, we'll be stuck with a system whose capabilities still don't beat Windows GDI, much less a modern system's. If Win 3.0 were killed early and people had moved to OS/2, I think the computing world would have been much happier.

Xfree 4.0 and changing color depth/resolution.

[Shane]

Does anyone know if it is currently possible (with Xfree 4.0) to change color depth/resolution without restarting X? I know you can change resolution, and have been able to forever, but it doesn't help if your virtual console size is 4x larger then your real size :). So whats the deal, has no one just writting a X tool to change color depth/resolution properly or is it just something X can't do?

Re:Kernel guys

[nyet]

Theoretically, there is NO reason why you couln't maintain your own on SourceForge.. just download the patches as they come out, patch your local kernel, and cvs commit into your SourceForge tree.

If you do, be sure to tell us ;)

Re:Oh god, die already, please, pretty please!

[be-fan]

That was a joke. As in ha ha. As in funny... I know 16bit and 32bit don't make 24bit I was trying to make a joke. Some people...