Mir 1.6.0 Release

Mir 1.6.0 Release

We’re pleased to announce the release of Mir 1.6.0.

For Ubuntu, Mir is available from the Mir PPAs:

It is also available as a source tarball.

Graphics platforms

We’ve improved the diagnostics when starting a graphics platform fails and added some tooling to help with the development of new graphics platforms.

New “wayland” graphics platform

This enables Mir to run as a client of another Wayland compositor (which can also be Mir). To use this configure with --wayland-host <wayland-socket> or equivalent.

miral-system-compositor
miral-shell --wayland-host wayland-0
egmde-confined-desktop --wayland-host wayland-0

Switch between hosted sessions using Ctrl-Alt-PgUp/Ctrl-Alt-PgDn

This is the last building block needed to enable migrating the Ubuntu Touch stack from mirclient to Wayland. (This will allow Unity8 to run as a client of unity-system-compositor.)

Work in progress: “DispmanX” platform

@raof’s initial work on the dispmanx platform for Raspberry Pi has landed. There’s more work to be done in Mir, and it requires a specialized system image with the driver stack enabled to work but progress is being made.

Wayland

There are some performance improvements and bugfixes.

Arch

It seems more package updates (GMock & Mesa IIRC) on Arch broke the build recently. That’s now fixed, hopefully also for any other distros that saw this problem.

Changelog

ABI summary:

  • mirserver ABI bumped to 52
  • mirplatform ABI bumped to 17

Enhancements:

  • [mirclient] Drop some more mirclient support: infrastructure, unit-tests
  • [Wayland] Avoid unnecessary calls into Window Management (Fixes #1049)
  • [graphics-platforms] Improve diagnostics by running the platform probe even when manually selected. (Fixes #1045)
  • [graphics-platforms] Provide a generic way to handle the Wayland buffer consumption
  • [graphics-platforms] tests: Add basic manual platform test harness
  • [graphics-platforms] Add “Wayland platform”
  • [graphics-platforms] Initial rpi-dispmanx platform
  • Drop the --wayland-socket-name (redundant) configuration option
  • New mir_demo_client_wayland_egl_spinner in mir-tests-tools package
  • New miral-system-compositor in mir-demos package

Bugs fixed:

  • Crashes & lockups caused by thread-unsafe code. (Fixes #1106)
  • Mir crashes when surface sets parent to null. (Fixes #1053)
  • Fix build against GMock/GTest ≥ 1.9
  • Fix build on Arch (Fixes #1084)

Note: _A Mir related whitepaper has been published by Canonical:

4 Likes

Mir 1.6.0 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 30 and up and is now available in the Fedora repositories.

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@alan_g
I don’t understand why I have to give my work email and my company name to read that whitepaper (I work in a hospital and not in the IT office)…
is it only for companies in partnership with Canonical?

I would have believed that it was in the Canonical interest to make the use of its own technologies, also among freelancers, as widespread and freely accessible as possible (and I say this without criticism, it is only a curiosity).

I don’t speak for Canonical, but my guess is the you’re interpreting “work email” a little too narrowly. Rather, I’d guess that you’re permitted provide whatever appropriate email address at which “[you] agree to receive information about Canonical’s products and services.” As for the other fields (company name, job title, and phone number) required for downloading the whitepaper, “N/A” worked for me.

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Downloading the paper is not restricted to “partners”, as @GizmoChicken says, it isn’t hard for anyone.

I don’t know where the specific wording originates, but it also applies to other whitepapers available from Canonical. There’s nothing sinister or restrictive about it. The paper, like Mir, represents an investment by Canonical and it is entirely reasonable to request information from those using it to help identify potential new opportunities.

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@alan_g @GizmoChicken thank you for the explanation.
I will use my personal email and N/A in the other fields as suggested by GizmoChicken.
Thank you again!