Re: Some perspective from the cheap seats...

Mark Vojkovich <[email protected]> wrote:

> > On of the key issues that I see at work here, is something I brought up 
> > quite a few years ago now. XFree86 desperately needs a suite of 
> > conformance tests that can be used to validate that a driver module is 
> > correct and the binary interfaces are functioning properly. The loadable 
> > module system is a step in the right direction, but simply compiling all 
> > the modules and releasing them as a single lump for every XFree86 version 
> > is inviting trouble. Unless someone has a change to sit down and 
> > physically test the driver modules on all 'supported' hardware, there is 
> > a very good chance that things will break.
> 
>    The xtest suite gives the driver a pretty good workout, at least
> as far as rendering goes. 

Where can xtest be found? I assume somewhere in the source tree, but I 
never even knew it existed until now.

>    A test suite directed more towards driver testing would be
> good, however, this is a matter of resources.  Who is going to
> write such a thing?  My todo list is long enough already. 

Well one key issue here is that developing such test suites does take 
time, but I think people have not realised that it is critically 
important to build the test suites *first* or at the *same time* that 
major code development is being done (this is one of the primary 
principles of extreme programming). It is not sexy that this stuff get 
built, but it is essential.

BTW, as a footnote to this discussion, you may recall a few years back 
that my company made an offer to the XFree86 community to contribute what 
has now become our entire SciTech SNAP device driver model to XFree86. 
The requirement was that there would have to be an interest in using it. 
This included not only device drivers (well the ones we could get IHV's 
to give us NDA releases for) as well as full conformance tests and 
everything. My offer was turned down, so we went our separate ways. Since 
then XFree86 4.0 has been released with an new (and much better) XAA 
architecture. Now XFree86 5.0 is on the table and in many ways will end 
up doing a lot of stuff that has already been done in SciTech SNAP.

Regards,

---
Kendall Bennett
Chief Executive Officer
SciTech Software, Inc.
Phone: (530) 894 8400
http://www.scitechsoft.com

~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~