Remove Raspberry Pi backend and renderer

Graphics / Wayland / Weston - Pekka Paalanen [collabora.co.uk] - 3 June 2016 02:23 UTC

This patch completely removes the Raspberry Pi backend and the renderer.

The backend and the renderer were written to use the proprietary DispmanX API available only on the Raspberry Pi, to demonstrate what the tiny computer is capable of graphics wise. They were also used to demonstrate how Wayland and Weston in particular could leverage hardware compositing capabilities that are not OpenGL. The backend was first added in e8de35c922871bc5b15fbf0436efa233a6db8e41, in 2012.

Since then, the major point has been proven. Over time, support for the rpi-backend diminished, it started to deteriorate and hinder Weston development. On May 11, I tried to ask if anyone actually cared about the rpi-backend, but did not get any votes for keeping it: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2016-May/028764.html

The rpi-backend is a good example of how using an API that is only available for specific hardware, even more so as it is only available with a proprietary driver stack, is not maintainable in the long run. Most developers working on Weston either just cannot, or cannot bother to test things also on the RPi. Breakage creeps in without anyone noticing. If someone actually notices it, fixing it will require a very specific environment to be able to test. Also the quality of the proprietary implementation fluctuated. There are reports that RPi firmware updates randomly broke Weston, and that nowadays it is very hard to find a RPi firmware version that you could expect to work with Weston if Weston itself was not broken. We are not even sure what is broken nowadays.

This removal does not leave Raspberry Pi users cold (for long), though. There is serious work going on in implementing a FOSS driver stack for Raspberry Pi, including modern kernel DRM drivers and Mesa drivers. It might not be fully there yet, but the plan is to be able to use the standard DRM-backend of Weston on the RPis. See: http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/VC4/

The rpi-backend had its moments. Now, it needs to go. Good riddance!

ca52b31 Remove Raspberry Pi backend and renderer
Makefile.am | 34 -
README | 2 -
configure.ac | 18 -
man/weston.ini.man | 1 -
src/compositor-rpi.c | 575 ----------------
src/main.c | 19 -
src/rpi-bcm-stubs.h | 327 ---------
src/rpi-renderer.c | 1830 --------------------------------------------------
src/rpi-renderer.h | 52 --
9 files changed, 2858 deletions(-)

Upstream: cgit.freedesktop.org


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