The X.Org Server's GLX Is Being Rewritten

[schmidtbag]

If we bumped the X version every time we changed Xorg driver ABI, we'd be on X25 by now.

Considering X11 is 26 years old, that's not as unreasonable as you're making it seem. That's basically a new version every 1.6 years, which is a good timeframe for software releases. But, what separated it from X10 or any of the other previous versions? Considering X11 has been around longer than me, I don't see how any of the major changes throughout X11's history would be considered less significant than the decision behind moving from X10 to X11. I would find it hard to believe if X11 happened to be so effective that for 26 years it just needed tweaks, extensions, and driver ABI changes, especially for something as complex as a GUI.

I'm not going to pretend I know better, and in the end I suppose a version number doesn't seriously matter. But to me personally, sticking with 1 version for a quarter century becomes equally as meaningless of a version system as increasing the whole number once every other month like FF or Chrome.

[Delgarde]

Considering X11 is 26 years old, that's not as unreasonable as you're making it seem. That's basically a new version every 1.6 years, which is a good timeframe for software releases. But, what separated it from X10 or any of the other previous versions? Considering X11 has been around longer than me, I don't see how any of the major changes throughout X11's history would be considered less significant than the decision behind moving from X10 to X11. I would find it hard to believe if X11 happened to be so effective that for 26 years it just needed tweaks, extensions, and driver ABI changes, especially for something as complex as a GUI.

Well, it wouldn't be true to say it was so effective to not need anything more - afterall, people have spent much of that time trying to work around deficiencies, and to design replacements for it.

But yes, X11 *is* the same protocol that was released in '87, and while modern apps wouldn't run on an old server (due to lack of extensions), an application written and compiled 25 years ago should still run fine when talking to the latest Xorg server...

I'm not going to pretend I know better, and in the end I suppose a version number doesn't seriously matter. But to me personally, sticking with 1 version for a quarter century becomes equally as meaningless of a version system as increasing the whole number once every other month like FF or Chrome.

It's the version of the *protocol*, and protocol versions aren't changed just because marketing people think that bigger numbers sound better. It's very meaningful that the version hasn't changed in such a long time, because it means compatibility with other implementations of that protocol hasn't been broken either.

[squirrl]

a couple of beers later

Rewrites are fine if somebody has documented existing functionality.
MIR/Wayland != XOrg
That is the new idea isn't the equivalent to the old idea.

We're always losing functionality. Gnome 3, KDE 4, and so on, it's a new play: Functionality Lost.
ie. Paradise Lost.