Re: X Strike Force X.Org X11 SVN commit: r2912 - in branches/7.1/xserver/xorg-server/debian: . patches
On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 21:14 +0300, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 07:50:46PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 13:06 +0000, David Nusinow wrote:
> > > On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 12:27:26PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > >
> > > My priority is to support our users as best we can, and if it was a choice
> > > between letting nvidia users hang themselves when they screw up or not
> > > letting i965 owners be unable to run Debian without backports then it was
> > > an incredibly easy choice.
> >
> > Are you seriously arguing that's the only significant upstream
> > improvement in 7.1 vs. 7.0?
>
> No, but in terms of driver support, it's the most visible, is it not?
> Everything else pales in comparison to 'my chipset is totally
> unsupported in release y.z, but works in this release'.
That's the 'anything that affects me is critical' stance. Anyway, the
point I was trying to make is that the vast number of upstream fixes and
improvements between 7.0 and 7.1 should be plenty important not to even
consider blocking it on something like this. The fact that this seems to
have been considered indicates a lack of upstream awareness to me.
> > > > Indeed, without any prior discussion.
> > >
> > > I didn't realize I needed to ask for permission for such things. If the
> > > -ignoreABI option didn't already exist, I wouldn't have done so. I didn't
> > > really add anything new, I just provided a new way to get at it.
It might have been prudent to assume that there could have been reasons
for it being command line only, and to ask about them before rushing in
the option.
> > Once the option is in xorg.conf and things work, people will tend to
> > forget about the option even when it's not really needed anymore. Then
> > when the ABI breaks again, that gets ignored, potentially causing all
> > kinds of weird behaviour resulting in spurious bug reports that will
> > waste the time of and potentially confuse bug triagers, unless they add
> > the option to the already too long list of gotchas to watch out for.
>
> I don't believe that it's going to be a big problem. Users with
> proprietary drivers are screwed anyway, as far as obtaining support now.
Ignoring an incompatible ABI doesn't cause problems with proprietary
drivers only. Keep in mind that bad xorg.conf settings tend to spread
like viruses, e.g. we still have to regularly educate people about the
braindeadness of enabling backing store or disabling certain extensions
in a SubSection "extmod", because these happened to be in some example
xorg.conf sometime at the end of last millennium.
> Hell, if you're _really_ bored, you could grep for this in all new
> attachments,
But there's a lot of things like this already, and it's becoming
increasingly difficult and/or time consuming to spot the really relevant
parts in any given report. If we keep adding stuff like this, I'll have
to re-consider how much time I should waste on bug triage.
> and add an abi-version-ignored tag for the bug. Adding this to BZ wouldn't
> be immensely difficult.
That might indeed be helpful though.
> > > Also, if you want to remove it from upstream, go ahead, but I'd like
> > > to discuss it first.
> >
> > Ah, so removing it requires discussion, but adding it didn't?
>
> Well, David didn't know it would be so controversial, I'm tipping, given
> how inclusive he's been on -x in the past. Now that everyone knows it's
> a point of difference (to say the least), it would be rude to get rid of
> it without list discussion. Plus, general etiquette says that it's rude
> to revert without discussion, surely?
Sure, I don't play patch ping pong anyway. My point is that similar
considerations should have been made before including it in the first
place.
> I personally have extreme disdain for proprietary drivers, but I don't
> think it's right to jump on David for this. -ignoreABI was already
> there,
My point is that there is a difference between that and an xorg.conf
option, and that this doesn't seem to have been considered
appropriately.
That said, it's certainly possible that the majority of relevant
upstream people comes to a different conclusion upon such consideration.
All I'm asking for is that such consideration is actually conducted
before rushing in changes like this in the future, if not this time.
> and the release team apparently explicitly requested IgnoreABI as a
> prerequisite for supporting 7.1, which I think we can all agree is
> a very worthwhile end. If you want to take the release team to task
> for implicitly supporting binary drivers, I don't think anyone would
> begrudge you.
I am indeed quite irritated that making it *convenient* to use
proprietary drivers (people seem to have managed in the last couple of
months since the 7.1 release after all) seems to be considered so
important as to risk a long term negative impact for free software.
> 'Can't we all just get along?',
I'm trying, and I certainly don't mean to pick on David personally, but
I'm trying to explain why I don't like the way this was handled.
--
Earthling Michel Dänzer | http://tungstengraphics.com
Libre software enthusiast | Debian, X and DRI developer
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