Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 21:28:49 +0200 From: Niclas Zeising <zeising@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Deprecation and removal of the drm2 driver Message-ID: <50b21ccf-f89d-cfd0-fb23-39ba80732143@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <3a5edc5c-3caa-830b-4bd9-53ff52feb8a7@freebsd.org> References: <3a5edc5c-3caa-830b-4bd9-53ff52feb8a7@freebsd.org>
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On 05/18/18 19:58, Niclas Zeising wrote: > [ Cross posted to freebsd-current@ and freebsd-x11@.=C2=A0 Please respe= ct=20 > reply-to and send all replies to freebsd-x11@.=C2=A0 Thanks! ] >=20 >=20 > Hi! > I propose that we remove the old drm2 driver (sys/dev/drm2) from=20 > FreeBSD.=C2=A0 I suggest the driver is marked as deprecated in 11.x and= =20 > removed from 12.0, as was done for other drivers recently.=C2=A0 Some=20 > background and rationale: >=20 > The drm2 driver was the original port of a KMS driver to FreeBSD.=C2=A0= It=20 > was done by Konstantin Belousov to support Intel graphics cards, and=20 > later extended by Jean-S=C3=A9bastien P=C3=A9dron as well as Konstantin= to match=20 > what's in Linux 3.8.=C2=A0 This included unstable support from Haswell,= but=20 > nothing newer than that. >=20 > For quite some time now we have had the graphics/drm-stable-kmod and=20 > graphics/drm-next-kmods which provides support for modern AMD and Intel= =20 > graphics cards.=C2=A0 These ports, together with the linuxkpi, or lkpi,= has=20 > made it significantly easier to port and update our graphics drivers.=20 > Further, these new drivers cover the same drivers as the old drm2 drive= r. >=20 > What does the community think?=C2=A0 Is there anyone still using the dr= m2=20 > driver on 12-CURRENT?=C2=A0 If so, what is preventing you from switchin= g to=20 > the port? >=20 Wow, this blew up quite a lot bigger than I anticipated. I'll try to=20 summarize the discussion a bit below and then suggest a way forward. The primary reasons we want to do this is because there are conflicts=20 between the new drm drivers in ports, and the drm drivers in base, since=20 they control the same hardware. It is hard to make conflicting drivers=20 to auto load in a consistent way. In order to improve the desktop=20 experience I'd like to see that graphics drivers are loaded on system=20 boot. There is also a push from upstream to have the xf86-video*=20 drivers stop loading driver kernel modules. It is also easier to keep a=20 port updated than keeping the base system updated, and updates can=20 propagate to multiple FreeBSD versions at once. This will also ensure=20 that all ports use the same firmware blobs. So, to the summary. A lot of people are using i386, and as such still=20 need the old drm drivers. There were also some reports about issues=20 with the drm-next/stable drivers, which needs investigating. Power is=20 another architecture that also is not supported by drm-next/stable,=20 although we hope to extend support to powerpc in the future. There was a=20 lot of discussion regarding making it into a port, or only excluding the=20 driver on amd64, and similar suggestions. To move forward, we'll do the following: Note that this is for current=20 only. We take the drm and drm2 drivers and make a port for it, maintained by=20 the graphics team (x11@). After a transition period, then the drivers=20 are removed from base. At the same time, pkg-messages are added to=20 relevant places to point people to the various available drm drivers. Regards --=20 Niclas Zeising FreeBSD graphics/x11 team
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