xorg/driver/xf86-input-jamstudio: [PATCH] Janitor: make distcheck, .gitignore.

[Paulo César Pereira de Andrade]

Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 03:27:34PM -0200, Paulo César Pereira de Andrade
> wrote:
>> >> looking at the git log, jamstudio is dead and I'd rather bury it than
>> >> put
>> >> janitor patches in. It makes it look like the driver actually
>> matters.
>> >
>> > we cannot simply put these dead drivers/libs/etc in some cgit limbo
>> > directory well hidden from the mortal humans? Just to organize a
>> little
>> > bit the things.
>>
>>   I wonder if anybody has tested these drivers for a long time.
>> Still they are packaged and distributed by most distros. So, either
>> they are working, or people that use this hardware is stuck with some
>> old distro or custom setup.
>
> Or they have switched without noticing. the kernel provides a number of
> drivers and these devices will be picked up by evdev.

  I think most of these are hardware using serial port. Don't know
how well the Linux evdev driver handle those.
  But IMO these are most likely systems that were "bought". Someone
builds an working environment and just sells it, while the users/owners
don't know how to modify/customize anything. But these should be rare
cases anyway.

>>   But while the repositories exist, the minimum that could be done
>> is to have it consistent, and buildable.
>
> Because it's there we have to maintain it even if we don't have evidence
> that
> anyone uses it?

  It is "arguably" the same case as for old video cards. ISA cards
don't work anymore with Xorg, so maybe it is time to just drop
anything that uses only serial ports?

>>   Well, and "new hardware" apparently is having a tough time to
>> keep track of the speed input api/abi changes :-) (But this is
>> talking about one vendor only, and it's binary drivers still
>> only for X Server 1.4).
>
> Having an API/ABI break every few months that requires a few LOC change
> and
> can fairly easily be #ifdef'd around every is too fast?
> Maybe that vendor should look at open-sourcing the driver then.

  I don't know :-) talk to the vendors, that most likely are just
starting to see users wanting Linux drivers, but have their main
target on Windows support.

> Cheers,
>   Peter

Paulo