Re: [git pull] drm request 3

[Linus Torvalds]

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
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