X11R7.6 got released on the 20th of December 2010. There were several status updates about XServer 1.9 in experimental on this blog previously, but here’s a more thorough review of this katamari. Terminology: that’s how upstream calls a badged annual rollup release. In other words, the server, drivers, client libraries, protocols, fonts, and basic applications are all individually released, and a rollup of all those is released from time to time, with a version for all of those components. The term comes from a series of video games. (Explanations taken from a message by Alan Coopersmith.)

Katamaris are released with a consolidated changelog, where all components and versions are listed. There’s also a git shortlog available for each component, pointing back to freedesktop’s git web interface for each and every commit.

I modified the table of versions to get the following table, dropping the X11R7.5 column, and adding a distribution one, so as to mention where each component for X11R7.6 can be found. It boils down mostly to:

• almost all drivers are available in experimental, built against XServer 1.9.
• libraries with heavy changes went to experimental while those with fixes and low-impact changes went to unstable.
• protocols went to unstable, they can’t really break anything.
• applications don’t matter too much anyway, most of them could be considered like toys. Some went to experimental, others went to unstable.
• fonts were skipped in this table, they are pretty much boring.

So there’s the summary: