On Jul 7,  1:07am, Peter Burwood wrote:
> Subject: New console code and X
> Does anyone know what is happening with the new console code. I filled
> in a survey about 6-8 weeks ago which had more than 10 questions related
> to the new console code, but no new console code has surfaced yet. ISTR
> that the current console code is part of the reason that the keyboard
> locks up and X crashes sometimes. It feels like it has been over a year
> since the new console code was `being worked on'. What is going on ?
> Also, when are we going to either see a source code release of X, or a
> new release of X ? The last release of that is Oct 28 1996!!!

Right, this time last year Nuts (Melvin Tang-Richardson) was working on a
complete rewrite of the console code. He bowed out of the RiscBSD project at
about Christmas due to pressure of work but we failed to get copies of what
he'd been working on so I started again from scratch (the console is not a
small project). The work on the console is being guided by the results of the
survey but its going much slower than I would like particularly as I've run
into a brick-wall with interrupt problems and needing to get a new bootloader
(I can't recompile the bootloader myself which is really irritating - I don't
have enough disk space). The date I was aiming for was 1st July but that has
slipped.

A lot of the problems with X are to do with its interaction with the underlying
console driver so the console rewrite is necessary to fix these. There will be
a new release of X as soon as I can get the new console reliable enough to
release. Note that initially you will have the choice of kernels which you can
use for text mode and work with the old version of X and kernels you can use
for running the new version of X until I get the text handling sorted out
properly.

Sorry about the delay but I'm trying to come up with something relatively
bug-free (at least in the underlying structure).

At the present moment in time there are no plans for a source code release of X
because maintaining it will eat up more of my free time than I can afford. I
have no objection in principle to making the source freely available provided
that I can maintain it, it is merely a question of logistics. There is no point
volunteering to help me do it because that will still take more time than I
have...

Cheers

Rob