Re: ATI Radeon on PC164??

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris redhat com>]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Robert M. Riches Jr. wrote:

>> At any rate, if one chooses to use the broken as hell stock 
>> XFree86 code, dont bother reporting bugs in bugzilla.
>
>Thanks for the very useful work you do.
>
>Is it the 4.2.0 sources from xfree86.org that you're calling
>seriously broken?  In what ways is it broken?  (With an Oxygen
>VX1 on a UP2000, there are one-frame-duration sparkles on the
>screen at times, but it works a whole lot better than anything
>else I have tried since RH6.1 on a Voodoo3-3K.)
>
>Is the rawhide code specific to RH7.2 (not yet available for
>Alpha, last I heard) or can it be compiled for RH7.1?

My point, is that no XFree86 release is bug free, nor is it 
likely to ever be.  This is due to the sheer volume of the code, 
and the limited number of developers working on it.  They cannot 
possibly test every hardware permutation out there and find and 
fix all bugs prior to a release.  They do a fantastic job putting 
together that complex piece of code, and they deserve credit for 
that.

However, once it is released, that is when users start using it, 
and that is when bugs are found.  When bugs are found, they 
often get fixed.  Those fixes are in the form of patches.  Those 
patches typically get sent upstream to XFree86.org for inclusion 
in the main codebase, however quite often they do not get applied 
right away, or they get applied only to the CVS head for the next 
release.  At any rate, downloading the stock XFree86 tarballed 
sources, even a week after release, means you are getting old 
code that has most likely had some bugs fixed in it, and often 
the fixes are significant.  Within a month, there is definitely a 
lot of fixes that have been made.

The Red Hat XFree86 releases are indeed patched.  It starts with
a clean CVS checkout of the tagged XFree86 release, which is then
patched with all of the fixes from stable XFree86 branch. To that
is then applied bugfixes that I've written myself, or that others
here have written, patches people have submitted via bugzilla,
patches I've picked up off the XFree86 patches mailing lists,
patches submitted by hardware vendors, and driver maintainers,
etc.

When someone implies/hints that the stock XFree86 code is better
than what I spend 3/4 of my waking time working my ass off on,
fixing and closing bugzilla reports, etc. and submitting patches 
back upstream, then indeed, that upsets me because they're 
implying that I am not doing my job.

I'd also like to add, that I was not involved with the recent
Alpha work, however nonetheless I polled for Alpha patches, and
spent at least several days of my own personal time to integrate
those patches into XFree86, build, test/debug.  I've been very
responsive to upkeeping our XFree86 on Alpha, despite it being 
someone elses responsibility on Alpha.

People who use the stock XFree86 code, either from source or 
binary, generally end up hosing their system due to the differing 
filesystem layout of the generic packaging, and nonetheless still 
file bug reports in our bugzilla also.  This in turn makes my job 
even more difficult, as I try to reproduce a problem that was 
caused by something the user has done that they should not have, 
or that they should not have reported to us as it is outside of 
what we support.

I am very insulted to see someone say "stay away from Red Hat 
XFree86 and use XFree86.org instead" after the effort I have 
expended.  And especially so from where it came from.



-- 
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Mike A. Harris                  Shipping/mailing address:
OS Systems Engineer             190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie,
XFree86 maintainer              Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3
Red Hat Inc.                    Phone: (705)949-2136
http://www.redhat.com           ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
Red Hat XFree86 mailing list:   xfree86-list@redhat.com
General open IRC discussion:    #xfree86 on irc.openprojects.net
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