modular -> monolithic

[Egbert Eich]

Russell Shaw writes:
 > Egbert Eich wrote:
 > > Dave Airlie writes:
 > >  > > This whole "partial" remonolithicalisation seems to not address the real
 > >  > > issue, which is a wrong general mindset, and instead this equals
 > >  > > sticking ones head in the sand and hoping that things magically go
 > >  > > away.
 > ...
 > 
 > The way it should've been done in the first place is to leave it all monolithic,
 > but have a script to download only the parts of X and drivers required.
 > 
 > Only the top level would've needed a configure.ac
 > 
 > After a period of hacking had been done, it would be easy to download the
 > rest of the monolith around what you'd already had, then do a complete build
 > to see what's broken.

This is missing an important point: it was considered a feature
to do out-of-band releases.
Something users, distros and hardware vendors were pushing for hard.

Considering the nightmare we all had I still think it is a feature.

Currently we are seeing a lot of API breakages. Some people attribute these
to the backlog of things that have piled up over the years.

If this is the case we should see less of these once the huge pile has been
reduced. Then it may actually become rather simple again to make a driver
that is API compatible for a range of server releases.

What do we do then? 

Remodularize?

Cheers,
	Egbert.