X.org server 1.5: An ABI Too Far?

[Adam Jackson]

On Sun, 2008-03-16 at 12:09 -0700, Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R wrote:
> Should Rawhide switch back to a supported version of X.org,

No.

> or at least make it an option?

I ranted about this logical fallacy already:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html

In detail, about this instance of the fallacy: you have got to be
joking.  How would you like us to ship that?  What happens when F9 ships
and nobody's tested 1.5?  How do we expose the choice of which server to
use to the user?  Alternatively, do you somehow hack in runtime server
selection of ABI?  If you do, what do you do when the user wants both
the nvidia driver and one of the stock fedora ones built against 1.5?
Who does this work and in what copious free time do they do it?

> Much of what makes a desktop contemporary depends on features in the
> Nvidia driver not presented in the nv driver.

Pretty sure I announced that X was going to be broken in rawhide.  About
four months ago, in fact:

http://lwn.net/Articles/257306/

(Side note: LWN!  I'm internet famous.  I'd like to thank the
academy...)

The proprietary NVIDIA driver will not work in rawhide.

The proprietary ATI driver will not work in rawhide.

_Any_ proprietary driver will not work in rawhide.

Anyone who thinks they do is chasing a fevered ephemeral dream.

This is not a declaration of war.  This is not rawhide claiming some
kind of moral high ground.  This is not a slight to the development
teams at any of the companies so affected.  This is just a statement of
fact, a logical consequence of the way rawhide works.

X has stable interfaces.  The driver interface is not one of them.
Sometimes it breaks.  We even ask the proprietary driver vendors about
how we break it to make sure they have a transition path they can live
with.  But it breaks, and thus is progress made.

Existence is suffering.  Possessions are fleeting.  Rawhide is made of
dingoes.

- ajax