what is shortest path to trying the latest ati driver ...

[Alex Deucher]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 8:56 PM, Alexander Haley <ahaley at alum.wpi.edu> wrote:
> So, I spent a bunch of time today .. and I followed the git_xorg.sh
> script, and tweaked the libraries on my system ... and after six
> hours, I actually arrived at a compiled Xorg server, etc etc in my
> build directory ... So - I followed the instructions, something along
> the lines of startx -- /path/to/Xorg ... and .. X even started! I'm
> thinking "great! For a beginner, this is pretty awesome" ...
>
> Quickly,  I realize that I have no keyboard support and no mouse
> support. And the original purpose of this recompile (bugzilla bug #
> 15708) also didn't appear resolved.
>

Make sure you build and install the mouse and keyboard drivers too.

> So - with hope, I turn to the mailing list with the following questions.
>
> 1) If I merely wish to try out the newest git pull of the ati driver
> ... is there a short easy way to do so that avoid recompiling the
> entire xserver kit - n - kaboodle?

Just update your ati driver source and rebuilt it only against
whatever xserver you want to use (either your old one or the new one
you just built).

>
> 2) Secondly -- I tried to "hotswap" my old xserver with the new ati
> .so files ... and expectedly this didn't work. The xserver log said
> "ERR! We're version X and this appears to be version Y" ... So, I
> deviously thought .. perhaps I could decrement the version number in
> ... in a make file? in a configure script? .. in a macro include ...
> Question # two is - just how does X know the version of what I'm
> compiling .. I imagined I'd see "VERSION=1.2.3.4" ~somewhere~ ... but
> I didn't.
>

At compile time the driver builds against the headers from a specific server.

Alex