Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S269872AbUIDKX7 (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Sep 2004 06:23:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S269873AbUIDKX7 (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Sep 2004 06:23:59 -0400 Received: from shockwave.systems.pipex.net ([62.241.160.9]:40870 "EHLO shockwave.systems.pipex.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S269872AbUIDKXk (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Sep 2004 06:23:40 -0400 Message-ID: <413997A7.9060406@tungstengraphics.com> Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 11:23:35 +0100 From: Keith Whitwell User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a3) Gecko/20040817 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Christoph Hellwig Cc: Dave Airlie , Jon Smirl , dri-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: New proposed DRM interface design References: <20040904004424.93643.qmail@web14921.mail.yahoo.com> <20040904102914.B13149@infradead.org> <41398EBD.2040900@tungstengraphics.com> <20040904104834.B13362@infradead.org> In-Reply-To: <20040904104834.B13362@infradead.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1487 Lines: 33 Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 10:45:33AM +0100, Keith Whitwell wrote: > >>>Umm, the Linux kernel isn't about minimizing interfaces. We don't link a >>>copy of scsi helpers into each scsi driver either, or libata into each sata >>>driver. >> >>But regular users don't tend to pull down new scsi or ata drivers in the same >>way that they do graphics drivers. Hence the concern of many drm developers >>to avoid introducing new failure modes in this process. > > > Actually regulat users do. And they do by pulling an uptodate kernel or > using a vendor kernel with backports. This model would work for video drivers > aswell. Sure, explain to me how I should upgrade my RH-9 system to work on my new i915? I'm not a big fan of the DRM code either, it's ironic that I'm in a position where I'm defending it. Thanks to the cleanup work Dave is doing though it is improving after a long period of neglect. However, introducing a new binary interface isn't going to magically transform a fairly neglected codebase into a sparkly new one. All I can really see it doing is saving a few K of memory in the hetrogenous dual head case. Oh, and introducing a new failure mode to be debugged at a distance. Keith - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/