[volkerdi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx: Re: libdrm 2.4.4]

[cheako at mikemestnik.net (Mike Mestnik)]

Chris Collins wrote:
> Here is what Pat of Slackware sent...it sound too daunting.
>
> Dave Airlied was helping, but as I wrote, diving into the can
> o' worms pushed me away.
>
> --Chris
>
>   
Yes, there is a solution though.

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

This will ensure you get a complete stack that's been tested, but not 
outdated.  Using a build farm you can ensure that you get the 
last(latest) sources that builds successfully.  This way you won't have 
to spend forever just to discover that you can't find a library that is 
old enough not to have bug X but still recent enough to have feature Y.  
That work has been done by ppl who may or may not follow patches.

At the vary least you can get code that builds on Ubuntu and see if it 
will also build for you.

One of the biggest areas needing improvement is back-porting of 
important changes, it would be nice to be able to select(cheery pick) 
patches to apply to the last few stable releases.  That is for each 
release there should be a patch for feature X and these patches should 
be able to co-exist.

This would allow a new feature and some important bug-fixes while at the 
same time not causing harry carry with other unnecessary features and 
bug fixes.  That is display driver improvements and user input 
improvements can be distributed separately.  They should also be broken 
down to there base elements so that if a feature implements a new bug 
that feature can optionally be skipped.

Keeping track of the important commits and classifying them is something 
volunteers could do, myself included.  However I wonder if anything 
would come from that?

> ----- Forwarded message from "Patrick J. Volkerding" <volkerdi at slackware.com> -----
>
> Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:19:16 -0600
> From: "Patrick J. Volkerding" <volkerdi at slackware.com>
> To: Chris Collins <chris at eorbit.net>
> Subject: Re: libdrm 2.4.4
>
> Chris Collins wrote:
>   
>> Hey Pat,
>>
>> I have to upgrade to libdrm 2.4.4 to help debug my box.
>>
>> The DRI/DRM maintainers have asked me to get the latest.
>>
>> On the DRI wiki there are some instructions on building
>> DRM and mesa from source. I fear I am going to screw up
>> my system by trying this without fully understanding
>> all the libs associated with my X.
>>
>> Can you make an upgrade package to libdrm 2.4.4?
>>
>> (This is a last dig attempt, before I go in and try
>> building source myself.)
>>     
>
> Ooooo... you're getting into a big can 'o worms there.  My experience is 
> that a given libdrm version will require a specific Mesa version, which 
> in turn will require another xorg-server version.  You might not be able 
> to get out of this without recompiling nearly all of X (libdrm, Mesa, 
> xorg-server, and all of the xf86- driver packages... maybe a couple of 
> times).  And, our experiences here with the latest xorg-server have not 
> been good.  It seemed (at least to us) that the developers rushed into 
> using HAL/D-Bus for finding input devices without adjusting the parts of 
> X that configure xorg.conf accordingly.  This is why we stayed with the 
> version of xorg-server that we used in Slackware 12.2.
>
> Anyway -- hopefully you will be lucky and might be able to get away with 
> rebuilding just libdrm and dropping that package into place without 
> rebuilding anything else.  I'd try using the SlackBuild script with a 
> version number change and see how that works.  Very likely without major 
> work you won't be able to compile much else, but you never know.
>
> Hope this helps --
>
> Pat
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> Chris Collins
> http://ccplanet.blogspot.com
> http://twitter.com/chris_in_cal
>
>