modular -> monolithic

[David Miller]

From: Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:31:33 -0800

> If a user is asking "how do I build every xorg module?", they're doing
> it wrong.  But when they ask "how do I get updated xorg bits?", we're
> answering "here's how you build every xorg module", when we should be
> telling them "install xorg from your distro, then build server and video
> driver".

That's such a load of crap.

For me personally I wanted to build everything because I wanted
to make sure everything built properly on Sparc and that I could
get radeon working on my workstation with libpciaccess.

As a result I was able to fix several bugs and get it working.

So should I just go take a long walk off a short pier?  That seems
to be what you are suggesting.

This kind of thing is exactly how you deter potential contributors.  I
can't count the number of people who have contacted me privately and
told me that the attitude of many Xorg developers is why they never
really hacked anything major on the X server.

Anyone should be able to check out the whole tree and it should build
cleanly.  Anything else is a bug.

I am hugely disappointed in the even remote suggestion that leaving
some portions of the tree in an unbuildable state is somehow OK.  If
you can't get past that simple premise, the rest of the discussion is
absolutely pointless.

> > If you think it's OK to leave drivers unbuildable for more than a
> > year, that's a serious problem.
> 
> If nobody uses the driver, sure.  You only cared because we told you to
> build the whole mess of code, which was our fault for doing so.

Your attitude absolutely stinks.