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Message-ID: <4B90AFF3.3030100@pathscale.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:17:07 +0700
From: "C. Bergström" <cbergstrom@...hscale.com>
To: Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>
CC: Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Ben Skeggs <skeggsb@...il.com>,
Dave Airlie <airlied@...ux.ie>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@...tuousgeek.org>,
dri-devel@...ts.sf.net,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [git pull] drm request 3
Pekka Enberg wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu> wrote:
>
>> The conclusion is crystal clear, breaking an ABI via a "flag day"
>> cleanup/feature/etc is:
>>
>> - wrong
>>
>> - harmful
>>
>> - limits the developer base
>>
>> - limits the tester base
>>
>> - wastes time and effort. (fewer developers/testers means that while _this_
>> feature was easier to add, all your _future_ features will be a bit harder
>> to do. It compounds up.)
>>
>> - so it hurts even the very developer who is most convinced that this was the
>> right thing to do
>>
>> It's a bad technical decision throughout. It's masochistic and often suicidal
>> to just about any project in essence. I've seen projects that did it once and
>> died just due to that single act of stupidity. I've seen projects that have
>> done it a few times and took the usage hit, limped along with the wounds and
>> never grew to the size they could have achieved. I've seen projects that did
>> it once, took the hit, learned from it and never did it again.
>>
>
> Agreed. What bothers me in this discussion is that people keep
> bringing up the fact that nouveau is mostly developed by volunteers
> and thus it doesn't make sense to make sure it's backwards (or
> forwards) compatible. But the way I see it, it's the complete
> opposite. It's _more_ important to support ABIs for community-driven
> efforts because you're relying on people who by definition don't have
> time to waste. While the nouveau people might have good intentions,
> I'm afraid they might be severely limiting their developer and tester
> base because they're not focused on real world problems (like the ones
> Linus is seeing).
staging != stable
Nobody guaranteed a stable API for staging and in fact it was stated
previously it needed to be changed. Please lets just get back to work
and stop declaring the sky is falling.
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