[cairo] Question on DirectFB backend

[Chris Wilson]

Excerpts from Lionel Landwerlin's message of Fri Nov 20 14:01:26 +0000 2009:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Chris Wilson <chris at chris-wilson.co.uk>wrote:
> > Lionel, can you give a quick pitch on why I should not simply delete
> > the directfb backend? From my reading of the code, it will only
> > attempt to accelerate the simplest of blits and blends [though, that
> > includes solid glyphs]. Everything else will trigger fallbacks. So is
> > there any justification for Cairo to continue to have a DirectFB backend?
> >
> 
> I'm probably not the better person to answer this question. But I can try :

Well you're using it, so you are indeed the best person to explain why -
thanks :)

> DirectFB is still mainly used in environments with a reduced amount of
> memory.

This is my thought as well. The cost is a few kilobytes of extra code,
some extra runtime memory to store additional DirectFB surfaces - but
what is the benefit? Can you point to an example where cairo-directfb is
significantly better than cairo-image to a DirectFB buffer? It may
indeed be the difference between an unusable system and not - I just have
no way of knowing since I don't directly use it. As the backend has no
active maintainer, I'm worried that code is stagnant and has nobody who is
competent to make bug fixes.
-ickle
-- 
Chris Wilson, Intel Open Source Technology Centre