[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] Revert "configure: ask vdpau.pc for the default location of the vdpau drivers"

[Ilia Mirkin]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 8:33 PM, Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/14 17:24, Matt Turner wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 9:16 AM, Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So all in all we have the following:
>>>
>>> Some distributions/people choose odd location of the modules. Which
>>> can lead to the system (vdpau/omx) looking at the wrong place for the
>>> backends, i.e. not working. One can consider that there is no way to
>>> override the module location at runtime.
>>
>> Do we have more specifics? If they're doing something stupid and it
>> breaks, they typically get to keep the pieces.
>>
>> Debian/Ubuntu install to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/? Isn't
>> ${libdir} just /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ in that case?
>>
> Hmm I was under the impression that ${libdir} and
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ are different things. Can I consider you as a
> volunteer for the following, even if the chances of it happening are zero ?
>
> On 29/09/14 17:16, Emil Velikov wrote:
> [...]
>> How many volunteers do we have that will guide Debian/Ubuntu/other to
>> do the correct thing ? If we have at least one, I will be OK with
>> reverting the patch.

Guide who? The maintainers? Sure, I'll happily help them out.

There are basically a few categories of users:

(a) People whose job it is to create distro package definitions. These
people usually know what they're doing, so pretty much whatever we do,
they'll be able to work something out. If they're used to setting
weirdo paths, they'll keep setting them here. No problem.
(b) People who do a LFS-style setup and want to install on their
system. They'll be generally fine with the defaults (/usr, etc), and
it will work for them here.
(c) People who don't want to mess up their system install but still
want to futz with other mesa versions (this includes me). Prefix will
now do the right thing again.
(d) People who use something akin to stow. Again, they want things all
inside the prefix.

And then there are the masses of people who don't really know what
they're doing, but they found some blog which had some stuff written
in it. It didn't quite work, but when randomly combined with things in
another blog they found from 6 years ago, something worked a little
bit. There's just not a whole lot we'll ever be able to do to deter
such users from making terrible mistakes.

Cheers,

  -ilia