Re: DRI SDK and modularized drivers.

[Luc Verhaegen <libv@skynet.be>]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 11:33:02AM -0700, Ian Romanick wrote:
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> I've been busy trying to get a release out the door, so I haven't looked
> at these patches yet.  I won't have a chance to look at the patches
> until at least late next week.  I also wasn't at FOSDEM, so I don't have
> any of the background info.

I've grouped the slides and the recordings at the top of my blog entry 
about this.

The patches themselves are actually copies of eachother, with minor 
differences to adjust for changes of the tree around it (there are 16 or 
so versions of the sdk done from 7.0 through 7.8). Any actual patch is 
small, and it is build system only.

> If these patches try to enforce a "stable" interface between core Mesa
> and the classic DRI drivers, we're not interested.  At all.  This has
> been discussed and rejected many, many times before.

Ah, prepossession.

Ask yourself, did the fact that xf86 video drivers were out of tree, 
ever stop anyone from _really_ bad api breakage stunts?

The difference with in-tree and out-of-tree here is that out-of-tree 
should, theoretically, lead to more prudent interface changes. This 
without having to enforce anything, it happens naturally.

Out of tree drivers never stop interface changes, they just make them a
tiny bit more involved, and therefor, hopefully, causes the person 
making those changes to consider his actions a bit better.

But as said in an earlier email, what you incur on overhead here you 
can easily make up in the driver internal interfaces. And then the other 
synergies come weighing in.

Luc Verhaegen.

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