Modularization mailing list and initial strawman proposal

[Kevin E Martin]

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.

Kevin