Xorg Application Development Infrastructure

Summary

Newer versions of Xorg include features to give more visibility into its inner workings for application and toolkit developers, as well as users seeking to diagnose misbehaviour.

Owner

Name: Adam Jackson
Email: ajax@redhat.com

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 17
Last updated: 30 September 2011
Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description

New versions of the X-Resource extension allow more detailed accounting of memory usage within the X server. The support for systemtap's dtrace emulation has been enabled in new X server builds. Other diagnostic extensions may be forthcoming as X gets reused in more and more environments.

This feature page is to track the integration of these features with the rest of the distribution.

Benefit to Fedora

With these changes, developers will be able to get better feedback about the interaction of their applications with the X server, improving Fedora's position as a development platform and enabling higher-quality applications and user experience.

Scope

X server, client library, and wire protocol changes all need to be integrated. Sample tools like xrestop and gnome-system-monitor should be extended. Example stap scripts should be provided and the trace points documented and explained.

How To Test

TBD.

User Experience

Little to none, although developers will have better tools.

Dependencies

Upstream completion and documentation effort will impact the completion of this feature.

Contingency Plan

None needed, purely additional features.

Documentation