drm / drm2 removal in 12

[Matthew Macy]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 14:53 Ali <aliovx at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 06:54:54PM -0700, Matthew Macy wrote:
> > Just in case anyone misses the change to UPDATING:
> >
> > 20180821:
> >         drm and drm2 have been removed. Users on powerpc, 32-bit
> hardware,
> >         or with GPUs predating Radeon and i915 will need to install the
> >         graphics/drm-legacy-kmod. All other users should be able to use
> >         one of the LinuxKPI-based ports: graphics/drm-stable-kmod,
> >         graphics/drm-next-kmod, graphics/drm-devel-kmod.
> > Note that this applies only to 12.
>
> I see that The removal of drm and drm2 has been reverted on svn. Could
> you please kindly share the reasons behind the re-inclusion?
>


I can’t really give the blow by blow of internal project drama, but the
gist of it is that “best practices” (which are not yet actually documented
anywhere that I’ve seen) were not followed with regards to the deprecation
process. Warner and others believe that we can address the objectives of
the drm removal (improving the user experience and communicating that
drm/drm2 are _completely_ unsupported apart from continuing to compile)
through less disruptive means. I am only acting as a lightning rod and
representative of the graphics team and so have done an inadequate job of
tracking their activities with respect to project timelines. As a result of
this misunderstanding Johannes Lundberg will be sponsored for a bit and
will be able to be involved in internal discussions that impact his work.

Our only continued frustration is that we were never given any guidance by
RE or core on said “best practices” when the discussion was taking place in
May and then those groups behaved as if this were a surprise when the
removal happened. I’m cautiously optimistic that this well expedite
improving communications on those matters.


Cheers.
-M