Depending on external libraries

[Kendall Bennett]

Michel D=E4nzer <michel@daenzer.net> wrote:

> > In fact I would argue that Mesa and DRI should in fact be merged *into=
* the 
> > core X server source code tree (as in CVS tree - it can still be built=
 
> > modularly). 
> 
> IMHO quite the opposite should happen in the long run. The DRI
> drivers should be released together with Mesa, and they and libGL
> should be removed from the X tree. The main effect of them being in
> the X tree has been that most people are running hopelessly
> outdated, feature-lacking and buggy 3D drivers. 

That would be a nice utopian dream, but in reality the 3D driver modules 
are always going to rely heavily on the 2D driver modules to work 
correctly. Especially with the way that DRI is structured today, as there 
is no defined ABI at all between the 2D and 3D pieces. DRM is an ABI that 
is part of it, but it is not enough to completely separate the two 
pieces.

Also 2D and 3D and not separate at the rendering level, as you still need 
to make sure that when 3D is active you get good 2D interactive rendering 
performance. Trying to decouple them at the project level IMHO would be a 
mistake. It would be much better to bring the projects together under the 
same roof so dependency issues can be discovered much earlier (ie: X 
developers aren't working with ancient 3D pieces, and DRI developers 
aren't working with ancient X pieces).

Regards,

---
Kendall Bennett
Chief Executive Officer
SciTech Software, Inc.
Phone: (530) 894 8400
http://www.scitechsoft.com

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