Hello intel-gfx, I'd like to offer a heads-up on the ongoing work in the FreeBSD project to update to a contemporary version of the i915 driver. For context, some background information on the earlier approaches we've taken to import the i915 driver in FreeBSD. In the past, developers often reworked the imported driver to conform to FreeBSD coding and even style conventions. Needless to say, this divergence from the upstream driver caused an ever-increasing maintenance burden, and proved to be a large impediment to updating the driver. In May 2012 we updated to migrate to the KMS driver and bring compat up to SandyBridge / IvyBridge hardware. We remained on this version for several years. In March 2016 Jean-Sébastien Pédron updated to the i915 driver from Linux 3.8.13, bringing in initial support for Haswell GPUs. A lot of effort went into reducing gratuituous differences versus the upstream driver, but the delta to the Linux verison is still significant. This is what we have in FreeBSD HEAD right now, and represents about 17KLOC of diffs against Linux. FreeBSD HEAD source reference: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/drm2/i915/ Jean-Sébastien and other developers have been discussing a new approach for post-3.8.13 updates. Instead of maintaining a large set of changes, the plan is to keep the driver as close as possible to the upstream Linux version, and use straightforward shims to adapt to interfaces provided by FreeBSD where possible. We took an initial step on that path with an update to the Linux 3.9 driver, and have reduced the diffs to about 9KLOC. https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-base-graphics/tree/drm-next-3.9 Current work in progress is targeting an update to Linux 4.6, and the driver currently attaches and basic functionality works (e.g., xterms and glxgears). A demonstration screen shot is at https://plus.google.com/114029301710423058970/posts/485LyZegC9B The delta to Linux is about 4KLOC right now. https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base-graphics/tree/drm-next-4.6 The diffs against the upstream linux code have roughly halfed with each porting effort. The focus is on creating a linux KPI compatiblity layer for FreeBSD that will allow the DRM and KMS drivers to work with minimal changes. The goal is to get it under 1KLOC and to the point where its feasible to follow the upstream development on a change-by-change basis. Our ultimate goal is to align closely with the Linux graphics development community and collaborate with Intel, ATI, and others on keeping FreeBSD up to date in their product development efforts. The Linux KPI module code and DRM modules will be put into the FreeBSD ports tree to make them more modular and sharable between different branches and forks of FreeBSD. We're hoping to get a BETA level release into the ports tree in time for the FreeBSD 11.0 launch this summer. However, the effort is still very much ALPHA quality right now and will stay in github as it matures. Even though the code is still ALPHA, we're looking for any feedback on the approach we're taking, as well as any reports of successes and failures on a variety of hardware. Feel free to follow up on this mailing list, or to join the freebsd-x11 mailing list on freebsd.org. We're also doing a bi-weekly community conference call to discuss this and other topics in graphics on FreeBSD, and we welcome others to join the discussion. As we continue the progress on getting the code fleshed out and matured, we expect that we'll collaborate on this list and in the IRC channel. _______________________________________________ Intel-gfx mailing list Intel-gfx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx
