On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 21:19 +0100, Stephane Marchesin wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 20:02, Eric Anholt <e...@anholt.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 19:47 +0100, Stephane Marchesin wrote:
> >> On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 19:18, Eric Anholt <e...@anholt.net> wrote:
> >> > On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 13:20 +0100, Stephane Marchesin wrote:
> >> >> 2009/11/6 Kristian Høgsberg <k...@bitplanet.net>:
> >> >> > Hi,
> >> >> >
> >> >> > This has come up a few time and it's something I think makes a lot of
> >> >> > sense.  Since all driver development (afaik) now happens in linux
> >> >> > kernel tree, it makes sense to drop the driver bits from the drm.git
> >> >> > repo.  I've put up a repo under
> >> >>
> >> >> Actually, I don't think a separate libdrm makes much sense. We don't
> >> >> want to add yet another outside component and ask ourselves questions
> >> >> like "how do I maintain compatibility" (which, incidentally, have
> >> >> already been raised).
> >> >>
> >> >> Given this, IMO libdrm live somewhere alongside the kernel.
> >> >> Furthermore when pulling outside stuff we driver devs can do a
> >> >> kernel+DRM+libdrm pull at the same time which is a win.
> >> >>
> >> >> And also users don't have to wonder where/how to pick the right
> >> >> libdrm. You get the right one with your kernel.
> >> >
> >> > This is a bad idea.  libdrm with the kernel means that users and
> >> > distributions can't trivially update libdrm.  So all of the users of
> >> > libdrm end up being an ifdeffed nightmare of both compile-time and
> >> > runtime detection.
> >>
> >> Why do you need to update libdrm separately from the kernel? Is there
> >> so much that's in libdrm that does not also require a new drm? Newer
> >> libdrm functionality usually also requires a new drm...
> >>
> >> > Our code used to be that way before we fixed libdrm
> >> > to be "only use kernel code that's going upstream, and never regress
> >> > it".  Things have improved in the last few years for upstream drivers,
> >> > and I don't want to regress them with moving libdrm to the kernel.
> >>
> >> Again I don't see what kind of changes you have in mind. You just say
> >> "regress".
> >
> > I need to enable a new feature in the driver by relying on a new kernel
> > interface.  This happens at least once per kernel version (every ~3
> > months), and we're currently retaining backwards compatibility to
> > kernels a year old.
> >
> > Today, this ends up easy.  In my driver components (Mesa and
> > xf86-video-intel) I pkg-config version assert on on the new version of
> > libdrm with the new headers.  I do a runtime detection of the new
> > feature with a GET_PARAM ioctl.  Then I use the new libdrm or ioctl
> > interface as appropriate.  An example of this would be
> > kernel_exec_fencing in 2.6.29, which impacts many files in the driver.
> >
> > If userland doesn't get to assert new libdrm/interface header presence,
> > then in addition to the runtime detection, I have to ifdef all use of
> > the new interfaces.  Now, if we screw up the ifdefs (which used to
> > happen regularly), people's builds don't work because they have old
> > kernels.
> >
> > People obviously thought that situation sucked in the past, as we saw in
> > both the intel and radeon drivers where pieces of the drm headers were
> > just spammed right into the files using them, under ifdefs.  This did
> > result in actual divergence from the kernel definitions and real bugs,
> > unlike today's situation where diff can confirm for me that we're using
> > exactly the same interfaces between userland and kernel.
> >
> 
> Okay, well in any case nothing in what you mentioned prevents the
> libdrm from living with the kernel. We could keep the compat stuff
> here, and we still have the advantages I mentioned.
> 
> So is there any other reason for not putting it with the kernel?

So you're saying that people building their distribution on 2.6.29 would
have to pull down linux-2.6 from master to build and install libdrm?

-- 
Eric Anholt
e...@anholt.net                         eric.anh...@intel.com


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