x.org is Hacker Trash

[Tobias Gerschner]

>    4. Re: x.org is Hacker Trash (Eric Anholt)
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:45:31 -0700
> From: Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net>
> Subject: Re: x.org is Hacker Trash
> To: Pavel Troller <patrol at sinus.cz>
> Cc: xorg at lists.freedesktop.org
> Message-ID: <1175287531.71826.17.camel at vonnegut>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> On Fri, 2007-03-30 at 09:54 +0200, Pavel Troller wrote:
> >   For example, I mixed randrproto-1.2 with xserver-1.2.0. What a surprise: it
> > crashed. I had to ask and I've got an answer: you need randrproto-1.0.
> >   IS SUCH AN INFORMATION AVAILABLE ANYWHERE ? I'm afraid not. At least I didn't
> > find it, and I had to waste the time of a developer to answer my stupid
> > question.
>
> That was a bug.  It's the sort of bug you have to expect to deal with
> when you're trying to build your own distribution and trying to pick and
> choose modules.
>
> If you don't want to deal with those sorts of integration issues, you
> should just be using a X.Org release, which is what we put out that says
> "we believe all of these versions should work well together."  Finding
> that was awfully easy -- 3 clicks from the front page to the ftp site.
> http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/X11R7.2/src/
>
> You want more hand-holding than that?  Sorry.

This is not about hand holding, this is about information management.
I am following this list for quite a while now and also some other
xorg lists. Certain information is simply not available not even in
the tarballs. (The xrandr / xserver mismatch is one example, but there
are plenty more such mismatches )

The point got mentioned earlier already, but once again. Aren't you
interested in more people testing your code that is in development ?
The easier you make it people to get ( properly ) involved only the
better for you , isn't it ? There is no single floss project I know of
that has too many contributors.

A couple of weeks back I offered to setup certain wiki pages to
overcome exactly such issues.  I got initial responses , but got
ignored over weeks and finally stopped offering my help.

I have no deep insight into the Xorg project but when a project can't
follow it's own release plan usually something is wrong (imho).
Whatever the reason might be a few more hands shouldn't hurt to get
the work done.

And I think in this thread were a few very valid and well thought
improvements suggested as well as help offered. Why refuse help ?

kind regards

-- 
Tobias Gerschner
Member of Board of Yoper Linux Ltd. NZ

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.