Modularization mailing list and initial strawman proposal

[Mike A. Harris]

Kevin E Martin wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 09:46:52AM -0500, Kevin E Martin wrote:
> 
>>On Sat, Mar 19, 2005 at 03:42:23PM -0500, Michel Dänzer wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 21:39 +0100, Roland Mainz wrote:
>>>
>>>>Kevin E Martin wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>   The XFree86 drivers module: xfree86-driver
>>>>
>>>>Why can't it be named "drivers" (yes, I know, "Xfree86" should be
>>>>referenced but that can be done in the docs) ? I don't like to have
>>>>giant-overlong-pathnames 
>>>
>>>xfree86-driver/xxx is shorter than
>>>xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/xxx.
>>>
>>>
>>>>and the drivers/ subdir will likely host other kinds of drivers like 
>>>>the kdrive, Sun DDX or the Xprint ones...
>>>
>>>My understanding is this isn't about a subdir but a separate module, so
>>>such drivers should be in another module I think.
>>
>>I've been thinking about this over the weekend, and talked with Keith
>>about it briefly as well before he left on vacation.
>>
>>There are likely to be additional drivers over time, and we should
>>figure out how to incorporate them into the modular tree.  Let's take an
>>XAA and a kdrive based MGA driver as examples.  We currently have
>>specified xfree86-driver and if we created another module for kdrive
>>called kdrive-driver, then those modules could contain the MGA drivers
>>as follows:
>>
>>    xfree86-driver/mga
>>    kdrive-driver/mga
>>
>>The problem here is that there are two packages named the same, i.e.,
>>mga, and we should give people a way to distinguish them.  So, we could
>>do something like the following:
>>
>>    xfree86-driver/xaa-mga
>>    kdrive-driver/kaa-mga
>>
>>but that seems a bit redundant.  We could also go with just "driver" as
>>the module name, and have a directory hierarchy.  For example:
>>
>>    driver/xaa/mga
>>    driver/kaa/mga
>>
>>Again, that suffers from the problem of two packages being named the
>>same.  The next possibility is:
>>
>>    driver/xaa-mga
>>    driver/kaa-mga
>>
>>Of the possibilities above, I prefer this solution, since the directory
>>names are descriptive, unique and would correspond to the package names,
>>and the directory structure is flat (which both Keith and I liked).
>>
>>Comments and/or suggestions?  Other possibilities?
> 
> 
> I haven't heard any comments yet, so unless someone else comes up with a
> better suggestion, I'll add this to the proposal when I make my update
> on Wednesday.

drivers/mga/{xaa,kaa}  is another possibility.  Not sure wether it
is more beneficial or not, but thought i'd suggest it anyway.