Intel Mesa Gives Problems With KDE's KWin, Again

[pingufunkybeat]

Using Mesa renderer string for determining features is the same stupid thing as using UserAgent string in browsers. Just test functionality and performance experimentally at runtime if needed.

The functionality tests caused the system to crash. That's why drivers were blacklisted -- even testing functionality and performance caused them to crash.

[baryluk]

Using Mesa renderer string for determining features is the same stupid thing as using UserAgent string in browsers. Just test functionality and performance experimentally at runtime if needed.

[TheBlackCat]

This issue comes up every few months. The core problem here is that the KDE devs were writing new code which used OpenGL features that were just being implemented in the open drivers. Nothing wrong with that in principle but it requires fairly close communication between app and driver developers so everyone understands what should and should not work.

Except that isn't what happened. The features that broke had been working for several releases by that point. They hadn't been significantly changed.

[mat69]

"We Germans are direct and speak the truth" etc. Such remarks have no place in (what should be) a technical discussion.

Well but it is not racism per se. Though the "speak the truth" is in fact crap.

[BlackStar]

What kind of racist remark are you talking of?

Imho his mail is indeed way too long and might apear arrogant instead of solution oriented. I doubt that devs who themselves have to cope with rare spare time they can invest in their projects are willing to read long rants in this regard.

"We Germans are direct and speak the truth" etc. Such remarks have no place in (what should be) a technical discussion.

[mat69]

Martin's email to mesa-dev really doesn't paint him in a good light. Interpersonal skills are of utmost important to a project manager and he displays close to none. Plus, his racist remark was very ill-conceived.

In any case, the solution is simple:
(a) write piglit tests to cover kwin functionality
(b) establish minimum version requirements (e.g. kwin 4.7 requires mesa 7.11)

Ranting and panting won't get us anywhere.

What kind of racist remark are you talking of?

Imho his mail is indeed way too long and might apear arrogant instead of solution oriented. I doubt that devs who themselves have to cope with rare spare time they can invest in their projects are willing to read long rants in this regard.

[BlackStar]

Martin's email to mesa-dev really doesn't paint him in a good light. Interpersonal skills are of utmost important to a project manager and he displays close to none. Plus, his racist remark was very ill-conceived.

In any case, the solution is simple:
(a) write piglit tests to cover kwin functionality
(b) establish minimum version requirements (e.g. kwin 4.7 requires mesa 7.11)

Ranting and panting won't get us anywhere.

[mat69]

I couldn't disagree more. The features were implemented as much as they could be on the given piece of hardware. GLSL is not C. An arbitrary piece of code in GLSL might not work everywhere. That's the reality. Just pay attention to your code and it will pay off.

As for the discussion on the ML, it proves that nobody has the time to test his software with someone else's software. Most people are unpaid and simply don't care. (what would you choose: hacking some drivers or kwin for free, or checking out the chick who lives next door, or maybe playing in a rock band and have some fun?)

I have to admit that I lack the knowledge in this regard and was posting what I remembered or thought to remember.

In any case I think we can agree that blogs for sure aren't the correct medium to raise issues. I think they are a good way to inform others (i.e. not the affected devs) of it, but informing should imo ideally not contain finger pointing at all. Still the situation for the users is bad and that should improve one way or the other.

[marek]

Actually free drivers _started_ to advertise features as implemented while they weren't.

I couldn't disagree more. The features were implemented as much as they could be on the given piece of hardware. GLSL is not C. An arbitrary piece of code in GLSL might not work everywhere. That's the reality. Just pay attention to your code and it will pay off.

As for the discussion on the ML, it proves that nobody has the time to test his software with someone else's software. Most people are unpaid and simply don't care. (what would you choose: hacking some drivers or kwin for free, or checking out the chick who lives next door, or maybe playing in a rock band and have some fun?)

[kayosiii]

Like I said I think the best way would be to pass a flag when asking about advertised features that tells the driver to only say yes if the feature is fully implemented and stable. That way a client could ask for only features that are done and really implemented.