The first round just passed so fast, and what I did?

The case: the IGT test kms_cursor_crc

Being acquainted with a IGT test

  1. Anatomy of the test
    What: study, read the code, dive into each function, and describe its structure, steps, and functionality.
    To: be well aware of the code construction and, consequently, able to figure out and deal with problems.
  2. Patches to improve test documentation
    What: During the study of the kms_cursor_crc test, I realized that the subtests had no description that would help a newcomer to perceive the purpose of that subtest. To improve this documentation and some code comments, I sent some patches to IGT with what I was able to understand from my inspection.
  3. Refactoring function with parameters never used.
    Outside the context of exploring and becoming acquainted with the case, examining the anatomy of the kms_cursor_crc I caught useless parameters in a general IGT function, i.e., it requires two parameters, but never uses them within its code. I checked the author (git blame) and asked him on IRC about the need for these additional parameters, but I didn’t get a response (or maybe I missed the reply due to disconnection). Then, I sent an RFC patch to the mailing list and also nothing. Finally, my mentor took a look, and he agreed that the parameters seem useless and can be removed. He asked me to resend as a normal patch.

Maybe you can also take a look: lib/igt_fb: remove extra parameters from igt_put_caito_ctx

Solving some problems

I have also sent a patchset to treat to reported problems in kms_cursor_crc:

  1. Access to debugfs data file is blocked
  2. Unstable behaviour in sequential subtests

You can check out more about that in my previous posts. Reviewing the logs, I saw that these problems in prepare_crtc were introduced more recently since some Haneen commits report that subtests were working before. I noticed that waiting for the blank is a solution used before and removed by another commit that not seems to treat this issue.

Sadly, my patches also received no feedback at all. So, if you are interested in them or can make an interesting comment, go ahead! :)

Preparing for the second round

In the last few days, I surveyed the materials and tasks needed to execute the second round of my project. This is a kind of roadmap with useful links.

As far as I know, I have to deal with three issues that seem currently not supported by VKMS:

  1. Enhance the blend function to provide alpha composing
    To solve warning message in pipe-%s-cursor-alpha-transparent
  2. DPMS (?)
    To solve failure in pipe-%s-cursor-dpms and pipe-%s-cursor-suspend
  3. Cursor size other than 64x64
    • https://drmdb.emersion.fr/devices/3a5c55e30723
    • https://drmdb.emersion.fr/capabilities
    • See drivers/gpu/drm/drm_ioctl.c
    • See drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c (drm_getCap) 
      drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:131:    dev->mode_config.funcs = &vkms_mode_funcs;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:132:    dev->mode_config.min_width = XRES_MIN;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:133:    dev->mode_config.min_height = YRES_MIN;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:134:    dev->mode_config.max_width = XRES_MAX;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:135:    dev->mode_config.max_height = YRES_MAX;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:136:    dev->mode_config.preferred_depth = 24;
drivers/gpu/drm/vkms/vkms_drv.c:137:    dev->mode_config.helper_private = &vkms_mode_config_helpers;

I also need to check the reason for some subtests like dpms/suspend are failing now, but they were working in the past, accordingly to Hannen commit message:

commit db7f419c06d7cce892384df464d4b609a3ea70af
Author: Haneen Mohammed <hamohammed.sa@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Sep 6 08:18:26 2018 +0300

    drm/vkms: Compute CRC with Cursor Plane
    
    This patch compute CRC for output frame with cursor and primary plane.
    Blend cursor with primary plane and compute CRC on the resulted frame.
    
    This currently passes cursor-size-change, and cursor-64x64-[onscreen,
    offscreen, sliding, random, dpms, rapid-movement] from igt
    kms_cursor_crc tests.
    
    Signed-off-by: Haneen Mohammed <hamohammed.sa@gmail.com>
    Signed-off-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
    Link: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/msgid/b1749f5c90da5721a481f12740e2e370edb4a752.1536210181.git.hamohammed.sa@gmail.com