The X.Org Server had more code churn in 2014 than it did in 2013, but its pace has certainly slowed down compared to years prior. But at the same time for those thinking X.Org Server development is going the way of the dinosaur due to Mir and Wayland, you're sadly mistaken too.
I ran some end-of-year Git stats on the X.Org Server Git tree to see how development panned out over 2014 compared to prior years. First up, the xserver tree is up to 1731 files consisting of 707045 lines of code done over 14610 commits from 474 different authors.
2014 saw 848 commits to the X.Org Server repository compared to 793 in 2013. However, from 2006 through 2012 were years where the X.Org Server code-base saw more than one thousand commits each year -- or at its peak, 2114 commits in 2008. Wayland and Mir likely have some impact with not pushing as much forward technology into xorg-server these days, but there's also growing code outside of the X.Org Server that's of importance too like libinput, Pixman, xkbcommon, etc. Significant code added to the X.Org Server in recent time has been GLAMOR and the xf86-video-modesetting driver.
Aside from the commit count, when it comes to churn in the code, 2014 in the xserver saw 71,983 lines of code added with 54,018 lines of code removed. The previous year in comparison was just 22,072 lines added and 56,453 removed.
Commonly leading X.Org Server development is Keith Packard who at Intel seems to be just tasked with X.Org Server work, is still the X.Org Server release manager, etc. Other common names still to server development are Adam Jackson at Red Hat, Eric Anholt who was at Intel but switched to Broadcom in 2014, and Peter Hutterer at Red Hat. In 2014, the X.Org Server saw new patches from generally just one to two dozen developers each month.
At just over seven hundred thousand lines of code, the X.Org Server LOC count really hasn't changed much since 2009.
Per the introduction, X.Org Server development has slowed down by the numbers but it's not dieing anytime soon with new features still being added and support for existing X11 applications still being needed for the foreseeable future. The next X Server release due out soon is
X.Org Server 1.17.
What's your hopes for the X.Org Server in 2015? Share with us by commenting on this article.
