[bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org: [Bug 3080] libdps and libdpstkare obsolete and should be removed]

[Roland Mainz]

Daniel Stone wrote:
> There is a debate on bug#3080 (link inline) about removing DPS.  Roland
> has asserted that since large UNIX vendors still ship DPS, we must ship
> DPS also, despite the complete lack of a server-side implementation, and
> that the upstream author has marked the project as abandoned for years
> now.  It has been deprecated since XFree86 4.3, released in 2003.

Erm... Daniel... it would be nice if you would not reverse the facts
here:
1. Only the DPS client side implementation of Julienz is abandoned for
years, all the other implementations in AIX, HP/UX, Solaris etc. are not
marked as depreciated (yet (see Alan Coopersmith's comment in the bug))
2. There is no common "upstream", DPS is mainly coming from Adobe and
dps.sf.net was just an opensource implementation - one of many...
3. Unix vendors still ship server-implementations of DPS - and the
client side should IMO removed _after_ the server side is gone
everywhere else. Otherwise we may end-up in the interoperability
catch-loop (how is that called in english - catch22, catch66... ?)
4. I never said "we must ship DPS also, despite the complete lack of a
server-side implementation". My primary point is the way how the removal
attempt is handled, not that DPS should not go away.
5. Could you please cite the Xfree86 release annoucement whidch declared
DPS as obsolete for all X11 implementations ? AFAIK there is no such
thing (yet... given the current debate it may be nice to stuff something
like that into X11R6.9/X11R7.0). Note that there is also a huge
difference between Xfree86 and Xorg - Xfree86 was AFAIK always only one
implementation of X11 (of many) while Xorg is now the sample
implementations (SI) for all X11 versions so any annoucements for
depreciation in Xfree86 only apply to Xfree86 and not Xorg.

> Does anyone have any realistic objections as to the removal of libDPS
> from the monolithic tree,

My objection here is that Xorg should finally use a professional way to
annouce that a feature on the Xorg tree (and default build) is going
away in future releases in it's own documentation as one of the main
documentation items. I am finally sick of the permanent bending of the
rules while citing other cases where the rules were bend, too. At some
point there should be a clear definition of "how to remove things from
a) the default build and b) from the source repository".
AFAIK originally in the Xorg Consortium times this was handled via 1)
Annouce the removal in the release notes 2) remove the feature from the
default build in the following release and then 3) remove it from the
sources in the following releases.
There should be a clear way how users/customers of the Xorg tree can
watch the changes and adopt to them. Immediate removal of features
without warnings isn't considered very professional. And for DPS it's
IMO important as DPS was once a major feature in X11 and it's removal
should be handled therefore carefully (and the removal of PEX cannot be
cited there as PEX was not building at the time it was removed. DPS
still builds (and Daniel... please... don't run around and hack the code
until it does not build anymore... this kind of argumentation is
childish...)).

> given that a) there is no server-side
> implementation, and b) it has been abandoned upstream for some time
> now.
> 
> The upstream code still builds,

Which is not true. There is a) no common "upstream" and b) the sources
at dps.sf.net lack the years of minimum maintaince done at Xfree86/Xorg
and do not build anyomre out of the box (yes, I know... you can hack
them until they're working - but that is not the same).

> so surely the users of DPS, who are not
> using an Xorg server to start off with, can get the code upstream?
> 
> I would like to frame this as a one-week call for objections: please
> speak before the 28th of April, or forever hold your peace?

Please see above for my objections...

----

Bye,
Roland

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