Re: XF86 config Problem - Redhat 9

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris www linux org uk>]

Ah, ok.  First a bit of background...

ATI wrote a series of patches to add support for newer hardware,
fix bugs in the radeon driver, and other enhancements.  There are
9 patches altogether, as well as an all-in-one patch.  This was
sent to me and Kevin Martin by ATI.  It was later sent to
XFree86.org as well. I did not apply the patches at that point as
I had other work to do.  The code was eventually committed to
XFree86 CVS by Kevin Martin a few weeks or a month after 4.3.0
was released.

Of those patches, one is radeon-igp support, which is a
no-brainer there is no reason not to include.  It is totally
harmless to any other chipset.  There are various other similar 
harmless patches as well.

One of the patches, is the DDC patch.  Numerous laptop and other 
users have had tonnes of problems with stock XFree86 4.3.0 due to 
the BIOS based DDC probe it contains.  This DDC patch fixes all 
known DDC related problems on these chips.  All of these patches 
are now included in XFree86 CVS destined for the next XFree86 
release.  I have applied the all-in-one mega patch to XFree86 in 
rawhide to fix the various problems that the patch fixes.

So people asking me to apply Alex's patch, are really asking me
to dump rawhide XFree86, send development back 3 months and apply
a single bugfix patch that fixes their one single problem while
creating numerous problems for other radeon users that the
existing XFree86 in rawhide fixes already.  The patch isn't 
Alex's patch, it is written either by Michel Daenzer or ATI.

That isn't going to happen.  This all-in-one radeon patch is NOT
going to be removed from rawhide XFree86 under any circumstance.  
The patches in rawhide XFree86 fix bugs.  They may or may not
introduce some problems as well, but that is beside the point
really.  Rawhide is not "official supported Red Hat errata
packages", it is Red Hat internal development packages leading up
to the next release of Red Hat Linux.

What I'm being asked to do, is to back off a patch that aparently 
causes some people problems (not confirmed to be a bug yet 
however), in order to keep rawhide XFree86 stable for people who 
want to use it.  That isn't the way rawhide works.  Rawhide is 
development, do not use it if you can not accept problems 
happening.

By all means, people should feel free to take stock RHL 9 
XFree86, and mix and match patches they want/dont want from 
rawhide or off the net, and build their own rpm packages 
(preferably changing the Release: field to include something that 
wont be used by official Red Hat packages such as 2.you.0 or 
something).  However, don't expect me to remove patches that fix 
numerous known bugs just because they cause some problems for a 
handful of users during our *development* cycle.

These problems will be investigated, and if a real bug can be 
reproduced, it will be troubleshooted and hopefully fixed before 
the next OS release.

Another option, is to download XFree86 CVS releases, and RPMify 
them or build from raw source (and mess up your system a bit), 
and test the CVS radeon driver.  If the problem you experience in 
the rawhide rpms is present in CVS XFree86, then it is a CVS 
radeon driver bug, and you should report it to XFree86.org at 
http://bugs.xfree86.org so that someone can investigate it and 
hopefully fix it.

In the mean time, while it is in my queue of bugs to investigate, 
it is not at the top of the queue, and wont be for some time, so 
do not use rawhide XFree86 at all in any way if this problem 
affects you and you must have a stable X server. Take the RHL 9 
RPMs and add the one bug fix, rebuild them and use that.

Rawhide, being developmental, is for people who want to beta test 
software, and can deal with it breaking from time to time, and 
possibly staying broken for unspecified periods of time as well.  

Do not use Rawhide in any production environment, as it is not
supported officially by Red Hat, and makes your system
unsupported.  If none of that matters to you, by all means use
rawhide, and report bugs.  Please don't expect instant bug fixes
though, as development is an ongoing process, not an 
instantaneous one.  The current rawhide radeon driver very much 
fixes more bugs than it creates, so it stays.  It will likely be 
updated before long as well.

Hopefully I can break some more setups and get development really
flowing.

<grin>

The intent of this email, is to explain that Rawhide is Red Hat
development, and is intentionally not kept stable or reliable for
external people.  It is essentially a copy of the current daily
internal Red Hat "collective conscious" hard disk if you will.  
Not an official stable bugfix source that is kept stable by any 
circumstance.

Yes, I am repeating myself it seems.  ;o)  I like to be clear.  
;o)

-- 
Mike A. Harris