[ubuntu-x] Ubuntu-X areas of need...

[Bryce Harrington]

The main source of docs is http://www.x.org/wiki/Development.  The
glossary and X server source layout docs are good places to start.

As to specific areas of learning, I would suggest reading up a bit on
using gdb.  Learn about the -core option in particular - sometimes
apport doesn't generate a good stacktrace but leaves the core file on
the bug, so you can download it and generate one yourself.  You just
have to have exactly the same xorg-server version / binary (i.e. if the
user reported it on i386, you need the i386 xorg-server).  What I do is
create a set of chroots, one each for i386 and amd64 for all the
supported ubuntu releases, with all the xorg/mesa/libdrm/libc -dbg
packages installed.  Then you can download a core to the appropriate
chroot, make sure you have the same version of xserver installed, and
explore the core file with gdb.

For NVIDIA, I'd say study the man page and review the docs and release
notes in the package itself.  Most of the triaging work for this is just
identifying xorg.conf options for users to test, to isolate which
subsystem has the error.  There's also a huge amount of material on the
web about troubleshooting NVIDIA, although be aware a lot of it is
inaccurate.

Anyway, good luck and have fun.  If you have more questions contact the
folks on the ubuntu-x@ mailing list or the #ubuntu-x IRC channel.

Bryce

On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 05:49:06PM -0400, AG Restringere wrote:
> Bryce,
> 
> Xorg and Nvidia both sound really good actually.  It would probably be
> better to study Xorg first and get a real grasp of how it works before
> moving on to Nvidia though.  What are the next steps, is there a suggested
> pathway and reading list I should do first?
> 
> Best,
> Alex
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Bryce Harrington
> <bryce at bryceharrington.org>wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, May 05, 2013 at 11:22:55PM -0400, AG Restringere wrote:
> > > Bryce,
> > >
> > > This semester is winding down and I'm starting to shift gears into Triage
> > > and Bug-Reports again.  From your perspective what packages really need
> > > MAJOR attention and that I could eventually package, etc?  Smaller
> > packages
> > > that get little attention would be better so I can learn the internals
> > > quickly.
> >
> > Hi Alex,
> >
> > Glad to hear of your interest!  And congrats on school progress.
> >
> > As it happens, I'm moving on from Canonical (this Thursday's my last
> > day).  Still, happy to give advice.
> >
> > In general, the proprietary drivers (-fglrx and -nvidia) tend to get the
> > least triage attention, yet are arguably the most heavily used.  Of
> > course, since they're closed source it's a lot harder to get things
> > fixed (thus why they tend to get less attention).  However, tseliot can
> > forward good bugs (with steps to reproduce, etc.) to AMD or NVIDIA.
> >
> > If you prefer to only work on the open source side, then xorg-server
> > would be my next suggestion.  Most bugs filed against it are crashes, so
> > it's mainly a matter of matching up stack traces.  Because the stack
> > traces for this package are pretty detailed, triaging work here tends to
> > pay off well.  This is the package I spent the majority of my triaging
> > time on, and I won't be doing it any longer.  If that sounds like
> > something you'd like to take over, I can teach you my tricks.
> >
> > Bryce
> >