Re: [mongoose@users.sourceforge.net: X upgrade policy]
On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, Terry 'Mongoose' Hendrix II wrote:
> I told the X people months ago not to force out utah - that's why I'm
> pissed off. An overnight upgrade of gtk shouldn't break my x server. I
> also think hiding behind the debian stand-by "it's not even supposed to
> work" is why packages are always broken - no one cares.
I don't think anyone is saying "it's not even supposed to work"....what I
think is the case here is that we're all trying to shake the bugs out of
the DRI code using wider-spread testing. Keep in mind that woody will not
be released next week, so the transition is actually quite timely and
important. We could remain using XF86 v3.3.x forever, but I think that
we would hear more about not trying to do the changeover at this point in
woody's development.
Keep in mind also that, while you may run on ix86, there are MANY of us
that don't (I have two sparcs, three alphas, and a mips in my "home
lab" that I run Debian on. This version of X using DRI is much improved
on at least Alpha and has the potential (really soon now) to compile and
run on my Indy sans huge amounts of patching, unlike any other X version
prior.
Lastly, the "no one cares" argument is rather insulting and, in my
experience, will not persuade anyone to look into your problems or respect
your opinion about the matter (last time someone insulted me, I just
walked away...which, I suspect, is pretty common and civilised human
behaviour). I can say, as a maintainer of more than four packages for
Debian, WE DO CARE, but you have to allow us time to shake out
problems. We've all made mistakes and released things that break "the
norm", but that's part of knowing your package, the future roadmap of the
packages involved, and the release cycle timing of unstable.
I back Branden's decisions to proceed with the upgrade to DRI. He hosted
experimental packages on his own for quite some time, hoping that he would
get enough people to test them while trying to fix up the monumental
packaging requirements of something this size. Whether he got the
feedback he needed or not, he made the decision and I think that unstable
is better because of it (now I finally have an X server that runs on my V3
in my main Alpha and a much less buggy X server on the other two). Sure,
there's going to be some hiccups and problems, hence the neverending
"startx is telling me that I'm not allowed to run the X server
anymore" threads, but things happen in unstable and sometimes, we just
have to weather through them or do what we have to do to suit our
specific needs.
To end this long reply, I suggest this: compile your own Xserver and utah
and install it in /usr/local until things work out to the point where they
are usable again for your setup. Running "unstable" means that YMMV,
which sounds like an excuse, but it's really the truth and is not meant to
discount complaints. Again, things happen, older software sometimes isn't
compatible with newer software, etc...either way, the point is, we do care
and, if you're looking for stability, stick with potato and just compile
the packages from woody that you need yourself until woody is released.
C
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