rfc/headsup: graphics driver packaging in F16+

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 13:17 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 09:34 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 12:12 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> > 
> > > And input is even briefer (evdev, synaptics, wacom, vmmouse).  I'd like
> > > to chop the -drivers metapackage down to just this set, and either make
> > > a new metapackage in optional for -drivers-retrocomputing or simply list
> > > all the drivers there individually.  Note that since we're keeping
> > > drivers for fbdev and vesa we should still get graphics on most devices
> > > even if the user doesn't explicitly ask for a native driver.
> > > 
> > > So that's the rough plan.  Comments appreciated if I'm overlooking
> > > anything.
> > 
> > Well, the less intrusive alternative is just to make graphics drivers a
> > comps group rather than using a metapackage. Metapackages are generally
> > 'frowned upon' in Fedora anyway, and you're supposed to do stuff with
> > comps groups. Doing it that way would remove the critical path
> > implications; we could then just add the important drivers to critpath
> > individually.
> 
> Not that I object, but that's just moving the goalposts from "which
> drivers in the metapackage" to "which drivers in comps".  It doesn't
> address the construction of the list.

Well, I was focusing on this part of your mail:

"For 2D we've got an xorg-x11-drivers metapackage that includes, well,
pretty much everything, and which is included in comps as a default.
This is lame, because it means a bunch of backwater drivers end up as
critical path and can never possibly get tested."

Which suggests the major reason to change this is the critpath
implications. My point being that if we do this with comps groups, it
completely removes the critpath issue, meaning we could still choose to
install lots of drivers by default and not worry about critpath.

It seems you have other good reasons to want to de-emphasize some
drivers, but still, if we make the comps change too, it means we don't
have to worry about drivers that are well maintained but for niche
hardware: we can keep them installed by default and 'fully supported',
but still not have to worry about them being critpath. We can still not
install by default drivers that we really want to stop caring about.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net