Hi,
It is possible for client to call DRI2SwapBuffers twice in row even tough client should update back buffer in between. Problem is exposed when application does stupid thing like:
renderScene(); glXSwapBuffers(); /* Might be long delay between but no rendering */ glXSwapBuffers();
glx and egl specifications don't say anything if driver may fail in this case. Only relevant part is that the back will hold undefined content. Second swap will results front buffer holding undefined content. Which makes me think that specification makes above code application error only that shouldn't be detected.
Is ddx driver allowed to fail the swap in this case?
There is some special case when application doesn't have any back buffer. Hardware limitation forces driver to share buffers between applications. Too bad sharing causes that new application might takes over the back buffer between swaps.
The special case where there is no valid back for client because client failed to render between swapbuffers has to fail either silently or with error. I would prefer to return error that is mostly likely ignored by application.
Should driver fail all swaps that would result to the front buffer to have completely undefined content?
There could be simple detection for the application trying to show random content. This would catch a few trivial application errors that would cause corruption in screen.
Detecting application errors (if it can be done cheaply) would help application developers understand that their code is causing problems.
If driver is utilising invalidate events detection can't happen in server side.
Pauli