Re: Migrating ports from XFree86 to Xorg (Was: Changing default X11_TYPE from native to modular for some platforms)

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

[trimmed pkgsrc-users and port-mac68k from the CC]

On 21 September 2011 10:52, Frank Wille <frank%phoenix.owl.de@localhost> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:34:40 +0100
> David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>
>> Given the quantity of amiga grf drivers it may well make more sense to
>> port the X drivers across from XFree86 to xorg, at least for the near
>> to medium term.
>
> That would be desirable, but the original driver authors are gone. The
> structure of Xorg seems completely different. I fear it requires a lot
> of X-experience to perform this task.

Maybe someone with sufficient experience in porting drivers from
XFree86 to Xorg could comment as to
the difficulty...

> BTW, does a normal Xorg driver require a wscons/wsdisplay, or can it be
> started completely independant of the console (ite, wscons, or whatever) ?

That would be a definite "either".

> I would prefer to have wsdisplay drivers for all seven Amiga graphics
> cards first. This is even something I would be capable doing, or at least
> helping with, in constrast to an Xorg driver...

For a bitmapped display (*) by the time you have provided a wsdisplay
driver for console use I believe you pretty much have everything
required for Xwsfb to run directly against it. The exception would be
for systems with unusual bpp mappings (which possibly rings a bell for
amiga :)

Michael - would it make sense to suggest a "reference" graphics driver
for people unfamiliar with wsfb requirements to read?

>> I suspect that once you have the PCI subsystem
>> complete and running graphics cards (excellent project btw :), those
>> cards would be supported under wscons and that may pull amiga towards
>> more wsdisplay usage...
>
> The problem is that those boards, which add PCI slots to a classic Amiga,
> are very rare. Less than 1% of Amiga users own one.
>
> A typical NetBSD/amiga user will have a special Amiga graphics card
> (usually CirrusLogic or S3 based) in a Zorro3 slot.

Granted, but those are the users most likely to be wanting the most
out of their systems, so while they are collectively not more
important than those with standard amigas they arguably count for a
little more than a strict percentage :)