[Mesa-dev] [RFC] loader: libudev vs sysfs vs libdrm

[Emil Velikov]

Hello all,

A recent patch by Chris, fixing some libudev fun in our loader, made
me think if we can clear it up a bit.

Having three different ways of retrieving the vendor/device ID does
feel a bit excessive. Plus as one gets fixed others are likely to
break - and they do.
So here is a summary of each method, from portability POV.
 - libudev: widely common across Linux distributions (but not all).
 - sysfs: written by Gary Wong to target GNU Hurd and *BSD. The *BSD
folk never got to using it though :-\
 - libdrm: used as a last resource fall-back after the above two. the
sole option used by *BSD, MacOS and Android.

libdrm seems like a nice middle ground that can be used everywhere.
Which begs the question: from a technical POV, is there any
advantage/disadvantage of using one over the other ?

I do recall Kristian and Eric participating in this discussion before,
but the only thing I can find is along the lines of "linux distros
should be using libudev" :-(


Can anyone shed a light/cast their 2c ?

Thanks
Emil