Alan McKinnon wrote:
Apparently, though unproven, at 00:56 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did
opine thusly:
Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off
the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have
been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the
user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had
done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been
able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may
could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not
ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it
themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a "stable" project.
Actually it did last many years as a stable project. A very very very early
ubuntu was the first to start using it. That gives it about 3 to 4 years or so
- a long time in the software world.
In relation to the total number of Gentoo users, the number affected by HAL
was small indeed. I myself had no ill-effects across several machines (other
than XML-induced frustration).
Your experience, though painful, was not the norm. Sometimes devs have to make
hard decisions, like break a small number of user's configs. At least they
gave you a flag you could use. Once it was evident that HAL was a total POS,
they have another hard decision: revert to no-HAL? What will that break? How
many unknown setups out there that are the opposite of Dale? What about the
next version of X.org that will not support HAL? Do they arbitrarily revert
the default to sans-HAL only to make it something else next verion? That may
piss off a lot of users.
I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config
of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the
same way now?
I think you are colouring the whole canvas with your own singular experience.
One mis-judgement does not make a wreaked ecosystem, and shit does happen.
SOmetimes in this world you're the hammer, sometimes the nail. You were the
nail.
I don't disagree that HAL is an utter POS. I just don't agree with your
reasoning that brought you personally to that conclusion.
When it happens to me, I do take it seriously and I give it a lot of
thought on future changes. After having this rig about 7 or 8 years,
hal is the only reason I have ever had to pull the plug out of the
wall. That is what I base my conclusion on because that is what
happened to me here. Yea, it worked for a lot of people but it left me
with a mess.
Maybe everyone that hal worked well for still has that trust. Thing is,
it didn't here. I lost a little of that trust. Some of the reasoning
behind this may have a lot to do with my health situation. I don't
trust Drs to much either. They are the reason I am where I am and I
wish I hadn't trusted them oh so many years ago. I like to belive that
people will do the right thing but it appears that depends on the
situation. I just got a mess out of them both. Seems to happen a lot.
What's the old saying: If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any
luck at all.
Dale
:-) :-)
