[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] glsl: disable resource checking in the linker until it's done right

[Brian Paul]

On 11/22/2011 07:20 AM, Marek Olšák wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 7:54 PM, Ian Romanick<idr at freedesktop.org>  wrote:
>> NAK with extreme prejudice.  Technically speaking, these are app bugs. I
>> absolutely will not disable all correct behavior to work around broken apps.
>
> You are picturing a perfect world that doesn't exist. The world
> doesn't evolve around some piece of paper, the world evolves around
> the implementations and the applications which depend on these
> implementations. And if this fixes a regression (and I can easily come
> up with a test where it does fix it), then this or a similar fix must
> be committed.

I have to agree with Marek here.  At the end of the day what really 
counts is that users (customers for some of us) can run the 
applications they need to run.  They don't care if we follow the 
OpenGL spec to the extreme.  And they don't buy the argument that it's 
right to prevent their app from running because of some minor 
technicality.

As long as I've been working on Mesa it's been more important to me to 
support user needs than to follow specs to the letter and wind up with 
disappointed users.  Of course, there's limits to what's reasonable, 
but I think there's a happy middle ground to be had.

For more on this kind of dilemma, see "The Two Forces at Microsoft" at 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

-Brian