Wayland driver development - December 2021 update and next steps

[Alexandros Frantzis]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 09:44:23PM +0300, Paul Gofman wrote:
> Hi Alexandros,

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the feedback!

> On 12/10/21 20:56, Alexandros Frantzis wrote:
> > In the mailing list discussions earlier this year it was recommended
> > that we go through wine-staging as a stepping stone towards upstream.
> 
> Do you recall which part of the prior discussion made such an impression?
> Staging used to be a testing ground for some patches, yes, but as far as I
> know no patchset was ever easier to get accepted upstream because of its
> presence in Staging. Nor that ever was a requirement for any patches to get
> upstream. So in this regard it would be probably more interesting to get
> some opinion if the direction the things are being implemented now is
> acceptable for upstream and Staging probably can't help with that.

My understanding was based on a discussion earlier the year, see for
example the thread at:

https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2021-February/181667.html

Of course, the circumstances have changed since then, and it could be
the case that going through wine-staging is not the most productive way
forward anymore.

The question then is, given that the driver is already quite capable
(with some documented inherent Wayland related limitations) and split in
easily digestible/reviewable commits, what more can I do to help people
form an opinion about the overall direction, so that we can move
forward?

> I am not talking for the primary Staging maintainers now and they may decide
> differently, but I personally doubt having it Staging is feasible. It is a
> huge thing (I doubt there is a precedent of similarly sized and scoped
> patchset in Staging) and I doubt any of Staging maintainers is ready to
> routinely rebase it. Additionally, Wine is currently in process of huge
> display driver interfacing redesign, which means the patchset will be
> disabled most of the time.

I agree that maintaining this patchset in staging is a lot of work (and
currently a pain due to the driver updates). As mentioned in my original
email, if this is still the recommended way forward, I am willing to put
in the effort to keep the patchset up to date as well as possible.

That being said, I am also happy to move forward in a different
direction (e.g., direct to upstream or something else) if upstream and
staging maintainers find it more acceptable and feasible. Not going
through staging is likely to be easier for all involved, but it's
ultimately not my choice to make.

> On a separate note it is not obvious how the presence of the driver in
> Staging is universally useful. It can't yet be enabled by default
> apparently. So probably it will be still tested only by people who want to
> do it specifically but then they already can do that easily by dropping in
> the external driver.

That's a good point. I think Zebediah originally suggested that we could
turn this on by default in staging, and this is certainly something I
could enable. On the other hand, given the cost of maintaining it in
staging, perhaps this doesn't provide any advantage compared to moving
directly to upstream, where people could just try it out by simply
setting the right environment variables [1].

Thanks,
Alexandros

[1] DISPLAY= WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0