Re: [PATCH 2/2] Revert "fbcon: Disable accelerated scrolling"

From: Helge Deller
Date: Wed Jan 19 2022 - 10:56:07 EST


On 1/19/22 16:42, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 4:06 PM Sven Schnelle <svens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Daniel Vetter <daniel@xxxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 3:01 PM Linus Torvalds
>>> <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Irrespective of this code being buggy or not buggy I think the bigger
>>> pictures, and really the reason I want to see as much code ditched
>>> from the fbdev/fbcon stack as we possible can, are very clear:
>>>
>>> - it's full of bugs
>>> - there's no test coverage/CI to speak of
>>> - it's very arcane code which is damn hard to understand and fix issues within
>>> - the locking is busted (largely thanks to console_lock, and the
>>> effort to make that reasonable from -rt folks has been slowly creeping
>>> forward for years).
>>>
>>> Iow this subsystem is firmly stuck in the 90s, and I think it's best
>>> to just leave it there. There's also not been anyone actually capable
>>> and willing to put in the work to change this (pretty much all actual
>>> changes/fixes have been done by drm folks anyway, like me having a
>>> small pet project to make the fbdev vs fbcon locking slightly less
>>> busted).
>>
>> Saying it's stuck in the 90ies, and actively trying to prevent
>> Helge from taking over maintainership at the same time looks odd.
>> I think Helge should at least get a chance to fix the issues. If the
>> state is still the same in a year or so it should be discussed again.
>
> You don't need maintainership to fix issues. You need to submit patches.

The very first email of this thread is my patch.
And you just added your comments to this patch.

> If otoh you get the maintainership first to be able to cram in reverts
> without discussions, then it's very backwards.
I'm working on the Linux kernel since at least 23 years and am a maintainer of parts of it.
I know that and would never push something which is controversal without discussions.

>>> The other side is that being a maintainer is about collaboration, and
>>> this entire fbdev maintainership takeover has been a demonstration of
>>> anything but that. MAINTAINERS entry was a bit confusing since defacto
>>> drm has been maintaining it for years.
>>
>> It was marked as 'Orphaned'. Anyone is free to send a Patch/PR to take
>> over maintainership. If you have strong opinions about that code (And you
>> obviously have reading your mail, set it to 'maintained' and care about
>> it. Everything else is just wrong in my opinion.
>
> I already added dri-devel so anything we drastically change can be
> discussed first. If that's indeed not strong enough then yes I can
> whack in full maintainer entry with a bugfix-only status.
>
> But really I try to not create facts with just editing MAINTAINERS
> first and ask questions later, that's just not a great way to
> collaborate.

Helge