[Mesa-dev] DEATH to old drivers!

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 03:28:14PM -0700, Corbin Simpson wrote:
> 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?

Ok... One part of that... Ian works for intel. What stops him from 
working on intels own i810?

Or is this the same like that time when people at XDS edinburgh said 
that they couldn't get i810 hw anymore, and i had google pull up tons of 
embedded boards still being sold...

Luc Verhaegen.