Will The X.Org 7.5 Release Schedule Be Met?

While the X Server is a very critical component to the Linux desktop and free software ecosystem, the X.Org project has had problems with delivering releases on time. Almost any X Server / X.Org release from recent times can be looked at and generally there were multiple delays in getting that release out that often spanned multiple months. In fact, for a simple point release last year it was over 200 days late. The most recent example is X Server 1.6, which was meant to be strictly a time-based release, but that arrived almost three months late. Beyond just being late, the quality of these X.Org releases have been degrading. Currently under development is X Server 1.7 and that too is running behind schedule.

X Server 1.7 / X.Org 7.5 was originally scheduled for release in April, but that wound up being an April Fool's Joke as nothing was actually accomplished in getting this update ready for release in time. In late April, the release schedule was then revised for a July release, but that was quickly backed to an August release schedule where it stands today. The most recent delay was to allow X Input 2.0 to be merged (so that we can finally have Multi-Pointer X) prior to the feature freeze.

This most recent release schedule put the X Server 1.7 code branching on the 6th of July, but if you head on over to the xorg/xserver branches page, you can see that as of right now there is no X Server 1.7 branch. Daniel Stone who has been heading up the X.Org 7.5 management is currently at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, which may explain this latest delay, but if that is the reason it will be at least a week that this release schedule will be behind.

Granted the simple branching of the X Server code from Git master is not a huge milestone worth celebrating, but it simply didn't happen yet and hopefully this will not impact the rest of the release schedule once again. The first beta release of X.Org 7.5 is planned for the 20th of July, which is less than two weeks away.

If this latest release schedule is to be followed, X Server 1.7 / X.Org 7.5 is to be completed and out in the wild on the 17th of August, which is just a bit more than one month away. It would be wonderful if no further delays are pushed onto X Server 1.7, but at this point the bet would probably be on September.