Bug#674952: xserver-xorg-video-radeon: fails to work properly without -ati

[Yann Dirson]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 08:33:47AM +0200, Maarten Lankhorst wrote:
> >>> The current situation just makes some people (eg. me ;) break the
> >>> dependency link that's the weakest to get rid of useless drivers, with
> >>> the results described in my original report.
> >> What are you gaining?
> >> $ for f in $(dpkg -L xserver-xorg-video-r128); do if [ -f $f ]; then ls -lh $f; fi; done|awk '{print $5}'
> >> 110K
> >> 5.1K
> >> 676
> >> 6.0K
> >> 117K
> >> 2.2K
> >> 27
> >>
> >>> If I check the Policy about Depends, "This declares an absolute
> >>> dependency", which is clearly not the case here.  Even the official
> >>> definition of Recommends makes me wonder if it would not be too
> >>> strong.  After all, someone with a radeon is likely to select the
> >>> readon driver, then the ati wrapper will be selected as Recommended,
> >>> but the latter should IMHO have no reason to pull mach64 and r128,
> >>> that would not fit the "packages that would be found together with
> >>> this one in all but unusual installations" criteria.
> >> The current situation ensures that X works by default. People can still
> >> select this or that driver manually as explained previously, so it looks
> >> to me like the current relationships are fine (and have been for I think
> >> many years).
> > At least downgrading to Recommends would keep things working by
> > default.  And even downgrading to Suggests, together with -all
> > depending on {radeon,r128,mach64}, would keep things working by
> > default - while allowing those who don't want extra stuff to avoid
> > cruft.
> >
> The extra cruft of a few 100kb? Make your own xorg.conf and remove ati.
> You'll sacrifice auto config but whatever is more important to you. :-)

The problem is, I still do not see why the small changes I propose
would not work, and thus I don't see the need for whatever sacrifice
of the auto config feature.

If there are any arguments that I missed against lowering the Depends
of ati against those drivers it knows how to wrap (and I am not saying
there can be no reason, I only have a radeon to test - I'm just
pointing to the lack of arguments, whereas I did my best to find
arguments for my proposal), I'd be glad to see them before I send a patch...

Best regards,
-- 
Yann