Re: [gentoo-dev] xfree, synaptics, and kernel 2.6.x

[Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 22:11, Eric Sammer wrote:
> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > It works as is anyway, so what's the point?
> 
> The point was that if the version of the synaptics driver changes prior 
> to the release of the xfree .15 ebuild, it would require those of us 
> using it to recompile xfree at least one extra time. 

There's no requirement to recompile xfree unless you _need_ a feature of
the newer synaptics driver. Yes it is nice to have the latest version,
but there's no purpose unless you require a fix in it. 

I'm glad you can appreciate my counterargument.

> The alternate 
> argument is that it would force those not using it to recompile X and 
> yes, that is obviously a much larger number. Also, it seemed redundant 
> to have a synaptics ebuild that is just sitting there and have the xfree 
> ebuild doing it "by hand." 

I committed the synaptics ebuild in advance so I would have one less
thing to do later. The xfree "by hand" synaptics is legacy, since as I
said it wasn't possible to compile the synaptics driver externally until
0.11.8, which was released just under two weeks ago.

> It makes maintaining it difficult by having 
> it in two places. 

There is nearly zero maintenance cost within the xfree ebuild for the
synaptics driver (simply change the driver version and go), and similar
holds true for the ebuild. I expect any extra maintenance caused between
13 October (when I committed synaptics) and whenever 4.3.99.15 is
released to be negligible.

> There is also the fact that xfree 4.3.99.* is still 
> masked so I didn't think releasing a new version of the ebuild would be 
> a big deal as it is uber-unstable.

In actuality, it is not uber-unstable. I've been running 4.3.99.x for a
fair while and have yet to encounter a crash that is 4.3.99.x-specific.
It's masked by virtue of being a development series.

> It's rather subjective, and as someone who has to use the combination in 
> question (xfree 4.3.99.x, synaptics, and the 2.6 kernel series (due to 
> an IGP320M chipset)), it would be easier to have the xfree ebuild use 
> the synaptics ebuild rather than pull it in itself. 

You don't need to use 2.6 for IGP chipsets. See the 2.4 patches:
http://bugs.xfree86.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314

> It's not that big of 
> a deal, really. I can do it and just use it in PORTAGE_OVERLAY if it's 
> not something that gentoo is interested in.

This isn't Gentoo, this is me. You're welcome to grab the 4.3.99.14-r1
ebuild from my overlay if you choose [1], but I don't consider it
appropriate for committing. Emerge it with `INPUT_DEVICES="synaptics"
emerge xfree` or preferably set INPUT_DEVICES in make.conf. 

1. http://dev.gentoo.org/~spyderous/overlay/

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