From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756438Ab0CDTIT (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Mar 2010 14:08:19 -0500 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:51865 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753672Ab0CDTIR (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Mar 2010 14:08:17 -0500 Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 11:08:07 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Jesse Barnes cc: Dave Airlie , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, dri-devel@lists.sf.net Subject: Re: [git pull] drm request 3 In-Reply-To: <20100304105624.70fe845e@jbarnes-piketon> Message-ID: References: <20100304103655.0b14343f@jbarnes-piketon> <20100304103929.6eb81d45@jbarnes-piketon> <20100304105624.70fe845e@jbarnes-piketon> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 4 Mar 2010, Jesse Barnes wrote: > > If marking the driver as staging doesn't allow them to break ABI when > they need to, then it seems like they'll have no choice but to either > remove the driver from upstream and only submit it when the ABI is > stable, or fork the driver and submit a new one only when the ABI is > stable. Neither seem particularly attractive. The thing is, they clearly didn't even _try_ to make anything compatible. See how all the ioctl numbers were moved around. And if you can't make if backwards compatible, at least you should make it forwards-compatible. Is it even that? I don't know. I'm kind of afraid it isn't. The new libdrm required for it certainly hasn't been pushed to Fedora-12. Will it ever be? And if it is, can you still run an old kernel on it? All of these are always possible to do. We've been _very_ good at doing them in general. I'm complaining, because let's face it, what else can I do? And btw, I'd complain about breaking backwards compatibility even if it wasn't just my own machine. I can pretty much guarantee that I'm not going to be the only one hitting this issue. So practically speaking: what _do_ you suggest we do about all the regressions this will cause? Linus