New X.Org Release Process Has Been Reached

Last week we talked about a new X.Org release process proposal for improving the consistency and quality of X Server releases through taking a number of relatively simple steps. Well, this week from XDS2009, a revised proposal has been agreed upon now making it policy for X Server 1.8 / X.Org 7.6 and later.

With this new process, there will be consistent six-month releases that should be very predictable. This is going to begin next Monday once X Server 1.7 is released, so hopefully X Server 1.8 will make it out in March, which would allow it to be pulled into the Q2'2010 round of distribution updates.

As part of this process, the master X Server Git repository is no longer open to all, but is only to the release manager. All X.Org developers should have their own X Server branch(es) and then make pull requests to the release manager if they want code to touch the mainline code-base.

The developers also want to pull the X.Org drivers back into the X Server core, which was done previously before their modularization, but they want to put the drivers back into core in order to come back to a more coherent API. This though will not be happening until early 2011 or so (around X Server 1.10).

Daniel Stone concludes his mailing list message detailing this new policy with, "Phoronix: Yes, we're really trying this time." Bravo! Let's hope this new policy really becomes a reality as these changes will surely benefit quite a number of users, distribution vendors, and developers.