Re: DRM kernel source broken/incomplete

Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, David Dawes wrote:
> 
>>It looks like the DRM kernel source in xc/extras/drm is broken and
>>incomplete, especially for BSD platforms.  The Linux version only
>>appears to build for a narrow range of kernels, and this either
>>needs to be fixed, or the minimum kernel requirements enforced in
>>the Makefile.
>>
>>Perhaps we'll have to roll back to an older version that does build?
> 
> How often does the Xserver / DRM binary interface change - 
> is it viable to just use the DRM in the running kernel ?
> 
> I suppose this is really a question for one of the DRM lists but,
> is it a forlorn hope that the DRM could have a static binary
> interface to either the kernel or the X server ?
> (I guess that a moving kernel puts the former outside the control
> of the DRM project ?)

There's a mixed answer (good news / bad news) to that question.  AFAIK, 
the user-space client-side drivers and the DDX should work with a quite 
old DRM.  That's the good news part.  The bad news is that some features 
and / or bug fixes may not be available.  For example, the current R200 
driver works just fine with the DRM that ships with 2.4.21 kernel, but a 
couple security fixes and support for tiled framebuffers is missing.