X.Org Server 1.16 ABI Breakage Causes Concern

[gens]

By custom kernels I mean the ones from Ubuntu kernel ppa. It worked till Kubuntu 13.10.

you need to check if the driver supports the kernel (ABI)
dkms will get you only so far and i would advise against it for major kernel releases

[sireangelus]

Are you familiar with QA testing? There most certainly is a need for it even for changes like this. "It compiles" does not mean "new bugs didn't appear".

ok, let me put this right.
When you update xorg, the DDX is opensource and part of the release of xorg, so its code gets modified and tested along the way with xorg development. So does the kernel driver. No other change is necessary in the rest of the stack - you can safely use mesa 9.0 with the latest xorg and kernel, if you like. Or whaterve mix of kernel-xorg-mesa you like.

[curaga]

ok, let me put this right.
When you update xorg, the DDX is opensource and part of the release of xorg, so its code gets modified and tested along the way with xorg development. So does the kernel driver. No other change is necessary in the rest of the stack - you can safely use mesa 9.0 with the latest xorg and kernel, if you like. Or whaterve mix of kernel-xorg-mesa you like.

OK, so you do not know what QA is. It most certainly is not dev testing on the level "it compiles" or perhaps even "compiles and runs browser".

[sireangelus]

OK, so you do not know what QA is. It most certainly is not dev testing on the level "it compiles" or perhaps even "compiles and runs browser".

i hope that qa is included in the development cycle of xorg. what i mean is that you don't need to do ADDITIONAL QA because you make a separate piece of software that needs to chase after the changes in the main software just because you won't open up the driver like intel does(intel is the first video card vendor in the world in number of sales/actual people using them)

[curaga]

That was my original point. It is not "extra" QA compared to open drivers.

When a Xorg dev changes the API, and does a sed batch job over all drivers, he compiles and perhaps runs a test suite.
When a GPU company prepares for a major X release, they do a full QA run. This is no different if your driver is closed or open; Intel does this just as Nvidia does. The only difference is in who made the change.

This ABI change invalidated Nvidia's QA. It similarly invalidated Intel's, but Intel didn't complain. Perhaps Intel tests later on, perhaps they're used to this. They certainly _would_ have a reason to complain.