[Mesa-dev] DEATH to old drivers!

[Corbin Simpson]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 01:50:25PM -0700, Corbin Simpson wrote:
>> +1. If anybody needs them, they're in git.
>>
>> Sending from a mobile, pardon my terseness. ~ C.
>
> *sigh* Software populism...
>
> But seriously. How would such a thing work?
>
> Drivers will be thrown out because none of those currently chiming care
> about doing the extra bit of work needed to maintain at least some
> highly standard interfaces.
>
> It seems that these less popular drivers are gone for good. Because what
> would one have to do to get them back in? What are the criteria for
> that? And how will such criteria evolve? Because stating "you don't have
> features that some cards already implemented 12 years ago" is a pretty
> shaky path to venture out on. What's next? "because i do not like the
> people who develop?"* Now that would be very free and open indeed.
>
> The way the mesa monolith exists today, also leaves nothing to the
> imagination. Once a driver is "dropped" there is also no way of
> maintaining it externally.
>
> To further that: an attempt at proposing some rudimentary SDK, which
> would shift the compatibility burden to the driver developers (to some
> extent, this SDK will also not be allowed to move as shortsightedly as
> before -- which in itself does not exclude evolution at all), wasn't
> exactly hailed positively. Such infrastructure would've made such brash
> "development" possible.

Ian's list of DRI1 drivers: i810, mach64, mga, r128, savage, sis,
tdfx, and unichrome. I have mga, r128, savage, sis, tdfx hardware, but
not the time to maintain it, let alone get it into DRI2-land, at this
time. If I suddenly get the time to do it, I'll gladly bring them back
up to speed, but as it stands, they've been getting cargo-cult
interface updates without any testing, and at some point it's actively
harmful to keep shipping them without testing, isn't it?

-- 
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? ~ Keynes

Corbin Simpson
<MostAwesomeDude at gmail.com>