Dude, you shouldn't set yourself up for such disappointments. It's like lining up repeatedly for electroshock therapy

Does this mean that we will also see better performance for R300 and real RENDER acceleration?

It'd be great to be able to use xcompmgr at full speed. I can't stand the compiz crap...

Hnnh.
What are the prerequisites for R300/R420 hacking?
(Other than having the hardware handy, and knowing C.)

Awsome. Thanks for the info!

I think that the barrier to entry to X hacking is still quite high. Of course some of this is unavoidable due to the number of interlinked dependencies. If I want to indulge in a little kernel hacking it's quite easy to throw a new kernel on your machine without building a new user space. X hacking seems to involved getting kernel, X from src and DRI and mesa all built just to try stuff out.

I was under the impression that the new modular X would make it easier to just build a component and test within a working X setup. If it's not the case and it's best to do a full src install it would probably be useful to have a page describing how one runs a parallel X install without hosing the distro version of X. Most casual developers are only likely to have one machine and it can keep quite daunting if your run the risk of killing a working setup.

The link to the development documentation is useful but despite the text indicating there are instructions on how to get started it's not immediately clear what pages are worth reading first. What would be useful is a "GettingStartedWithXDevelopment" page linked at the top of the Developer page with notes of how a potential developer should set-up their development environment so they can make their first steps into the world of X hacking.

That's a useful write-up. I shall have to see how easily that builds on my Gentoo system (dev packages are kinda the default). But I'll certainly have a play.

Provided that the rest of your stack is new enough, you should be able to just install all the -devel versions and then hack on your one component. If you just wanted to hack on the X video driver (not the 3D driver) then you could definitely just pull that driver's source and play with your system as is.

Getting the 3D side involved probably means something a little more like ajax is suggesting. However, if your system mesa is new enough, you might be able to get away with just replacing the single DRI driver and leaving the rest alone.

Even Kristian's instructions where he's hacking on DRI (which intertwines into every part of the graphics stack), he still doesn't have to rebuild all of X. He's using his system's X libraries, headers and applications.

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one has to admit that X hacking is very elite.... (I'm talking about technical level of entry).

Linky? Nothing on developer.amd.com that I can see, or lwn.net or freedesktop.org...

Ya. I'd like to see this also...


Oh, and this is terrific news.

Thank you!

Just feel with you
Thanks..