From b6ab7a8e28184b247188ff645f24dbcd2d4fe1ca Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Drew DeVault Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2019 13:14:16 -0400 Subject: Status update, october 2019 --- _posts/2019-10-15-Status-update-October-2019.md | 105 ++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 105 insertions(+) create mode 100644 _posts/2019-10-15-Status-update-October-2019.md diff --git a/_posts/2019-10-15-Status-update-October-2019.md b/_posts/2019-10-15-Status-update-October-2019.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05e438c --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2019-10-15-Status-update-October-2019.md @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: Status update, October 2019 +tags: ["status update"] +--- + +Last month, I gave you an update at the conclusion of a long series of travels. +But, I wasn't done yet - this month, I spent a week in Montreal for [XDC][xdc]. +Simon Ser put up [a great write-up][simon blog] which goes over a lot of the +important things we discussed there. It was a wonderful conference and well +worth the trip - but I truly am sick of travelling. Now, I can enjoy some time +at home, working on free and open source software. + +[xdc]: https://xdc2019.x.org/ +[simon blog]: https://emersion.fr/blog/2019/xdc2019-wrap-up/ + +I have a video to share today, of a workflow on git.sr.ht that I'm very excited +about: sending patchsets as emails from the web. + + + +Sourcehut's development plans can be described in three broad strokes: (1) make +a bunch of services (or: primitives for a development hub); (2) rig them all up +with APIs and webhooks; and (3) teach them how to talk to each other. Over the +past year, (1) and (2) are mostly complete, and (3) is now underway. Teaching +git.sr.ht and lists.sr.ht to talk to each other is an important step, because it +will give us a web-based code review flow which is backed by emails. This meets +an original design goal of Sourcehut: to build user-friendly tools on top of +existing systems. + +The other end of this work is on lists.sr.ht, but for now it's indirect: I've +also been working on [pygit2][pygit2 pulls] fleshing out the Odb backend API, so +that I can make a pygit2 repo which is backed by the git.sr.ht API. From there, +it'll be easy to teach lists.sr.ht about git.sr.ht - and perhaps other git +services as well. + +[pygit2 pulls]: https://github.com/libgit2/pygit2/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Addevault+is%3Aclosed + +There's also a fourth stage of Sourcehut: giving back to the free software +community. To this end, I intend to spend Sourcehut's profits on sponsoring +motivated and talented free software developers to work on self-directed +projects. I'm very excited to announce that there's progress here as well: +[Simon Ser](https://emersion.fr) is now joining Sourcehut and will be doing just +that: self-directed free software projects. He's written more about this on [his +blog](https://emersion.fr/blog/2019/working-full-time-on-open-source/) and I'll +be writing more on [sourcehut.org](https://sourcehut.org) later. + +Wrapping up Sourcehut news, I'll leave you with an out-of-context screenshot of +a mockup I made this month: + +[![Screenshot of a Sourcehut DNS service showing DNS records managed by zone +files in a git repository](https://sr.ht/_yhw.png)](https://sr.ht/_yhw.png) + +Let's move on to Wayland news. We've started the planning for the next sway +release, and it's shaping up to be really cool. We expect to ship patches which +can reduce input latency to as low as 1ms, introduce the foreign toplevel +management protocol for better mate-panel support, and introduce damage tracking +to our screencopy protocol - which is being used to make a VNC server for +sway and other wlroots-based compositors; and proper drawing tablet support. +We're also making strong headway on a long-term project to overhaul rendering +and DRM in wlroots, with the long term goal of achieving the holy grail levels +of performance on any device. + +[The Wayland book](https://wayland-book.com) is also in good shape. A lot of +people have purchased the drafts - over a hundred! Thank you for picking it up, +and please send your feedback along. I completed chapter 8 this month. I also +expect to receive the last few parts for my second POWER9 machine today, and I +plan on using this to test Wayland, Mesa, etc - on ppc64le. The [first POWER9 +machine][power9 article] is now provisioned and humming along in the Sourcehut +datacenter, by the way. + +[power9 article]: https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/10/RaptorCS-redemption.html + +VR work has also been chugging along again this month. I've started contributing +to [Monado][monado], which is basically to OpenXR as Mesa is to OpenGL. I've +seen merged an overhaul to their build system, an overhaul for their dated +Wayland backend, and even some deeper work ensuring conformance with the OpenXR +specification. A lot of this work has also been in getting to know everyone and +planning the future of the project, as it's still in early stages. + +[monado]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=merged&author_username=SirCmpwn + +To quickly summarize my other various projects: + +- **ctools** has seen many small improvements and bug fixes, and has grown the + dirname, rmdir, env, and sleep utilities. +- **aerc** has also seen small improvements and bug fixes, but has also learned + about sorting and will soon grow a threaded message list +- **chopsui** is stirring in its sleep, and I've been giving some new attention + to its design problems in the hopes that the next iteration will be the + correct design for a new GUI toolkit. +- [**wshowkeys**](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/wshowkeys) is a new little tool I + built to display your keypresses on-screen during a Wayland session, useful + for live streaming or video recording +- **9front** has been eating some of my evenings lately, and I've been making + small improvements to various tools and improving Plan 9 support among some + packages in the Go ecosystem. I have more plans for this... stay tuned. + +That's all I've got for today. Thank you for your support! Oh, and one last +note: I've been invited to the [Github sponsors +program](https://github.com/users/ddevault/sponsorship), so if you want to +donate through it Github will match your donation for a little while. Cheers! -- cgit v1.2.3