modular -> monolithic

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 12:19:54PM +0000, Igor Mozolevsky wrote:
> On 23/01/2008, Roderic Morris <roderic at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:13:13 +0000
> > "Igor Mozolevsky" <igor at hybrid-lab.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > It is easy to build!.. I really don't see why people are struggling so
> > > much with it! Here: it took me a couple of hours to write a script
> > > that goes through the categories building each package based on these:
> >
> > Hi there, sorry, but i had to reply to this. It sounded like a joke :).
> > If it took you a few hours to write this script, how do you expect us
> > regular folk to do something like this when that becomes out of date?
> > Or before you wrote that (while the other scripts are out of date)? I
> > try to test the latest drivers, which is easy enough, but X is way too
> > much trouble to build for a regular working person, so I just use my
> > distro's packaged.
> 
> Which is what the "regular" folks are supposed to do... If you
> download a new driver you can run ./configure --help and all the
> options are explained... That's why my script took a few hours to
> write, I had to run it several times and on every package that it
> puked up, I ran ./configure --help to work out what the dependancies
> were put the package in the right order, re-run...

Right, for drivers this is easy.

And if the developers of those drivers keep their drivers building and 
running against current servers out there, most users are happy.

What driver developers should realise though is that it is not hard to 
keep drivers backwards compatible. All it takes is a change in mindset.

You need to balance between
a) the servers that are out there.
and
b) what features you can make build dependent (it is ok to reduce the 
feature set when compiled against a server that doesn't offer what 
you need) and what other things can you work around at build time.

This really isn't that hard to do, but many driver developers just 
stubbornly refuse to do it.

This while new driver releases often add bugfixes and support for new 
hardware, exactly those things users want to be able to receive quickly.
And these are also exactly those things which driver developers need 
feedback on fast too.

But because developers refuse to keep their drivers backwards 
compatible, users are usually just left in the dark.

The server/driver split is not a problem. It is our advantage, we only 
need to use it appropriately.

Luc Verhaegen.
SUSE/Novell X Driver Developer.