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I'm wondering at which point it would make sense to split the driver into multiple device family drivers instead of lumping it all together into a mess of unmai

by simfoo 6y ago

I'm wondering at which point it would make sense to split the driver into multiple device family drivers instead of lumping it all together into a mess of unmaintainable abstractions.

rurban 6y ago
The opposite. The lack of abstractions, mere industrial copy pasta code is the problem.
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  I’m not saying it’s true here but duplication over the wrong abstraction is always better. Seems to me if each graphics card is different enough there’s probably lots to duplicate.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    In software development absolutes are always dangerous.
    - andy_ppp 6y ago
      Apart from absolutes about absolutes.
  - rurban 6y ago
    Nonsense. This duplication is not maintainable and needs massive amounts of memory. Proper abstraction adds a few if else in the data, and is about 20x smaller. You can even read and understand that, e.g. what changed with this HW upgrade. No chance with duplicated blobs of structs and enums.
    - andy_ppp 6y ago
      > I’m not saying it’s true Yes, I did caveat my suggestion. Why not submit a fix if it's so simple ;-)
- mrweasel 6y ago
  If the Radeon driver is in the kernel now, then maybe at some point someone other than AMD will pick it up and start cleaning up excessive copy paste code. Assuming they play nice with the community, it could be a huge benefit to AMD in the long run. Still, 2 million lines is a massive amount of code to start working on.
  - samus 6y ago
    Unlikely, unless that entity has all the supported hardware at hand and ready for automated tests. Refactoring without a thorough test harness is ref*toring.
jimmySixDOF 6y ago
isn't that what Google are hoping to do with Fuchsia to make a next generation of Android that's not dependant on device drivers in the kernel ?
- junon 6y ago
  I can't see how they'd be able to achieve that, unless you mean simply that the device drivers would run in userland.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    Reinventing QNX will always be cutting edge
inopinatus 6y ago
At the point where people are making jokes about the Linux kernel making up X% of the GPU driver.

by simfoo 6y ago

I'm wondering at which point it would make sense to split the driver into multiple device family drivers instead of lumping it all together into a mess of unmaintainable abstractions.

rurban 6y ago

The opposite. The lack of abstractions, mere industrial copy pasta code is the problem.

andy_ppp 6y ago
I’m not saying it’s true here but duplication over the wrong abstraction is always better. Seems to me if each graphics card is different enough there’s probably lots to duplicate.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  In software development absolutes are always dangerous.
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
    Apart from absolutes about absolutes.
- rurban 6y ago
  Nonsense. This duplication is not maintainable and needs massive amounts of memory. Proper abstraction adds a few if else in the data, and is about 20x smaller. You can even read and understand that, e.g. what changed with this HW upgrade. No chance with duplicated blobs of structs and enums.
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
    > I’m not saying it’s true Yes, I did caveat my suggestion. Why not submit a fix if it's so simple ;-)
mrweasel 6y ago
If the Radeon driver is in the kernel now, then maybe at some point someone other than AMD will pick it up and start cleaning up excessive copy paste code. Assuming they play nice with the community, it could be a huge benefit to AMD in the long run. Still, 2 million lines is a massive amount of code to start working on.
- samus 6y ago
  Unlikely, unless that entity has all the supported hardware at hand and ready for automated tests. Refactoring without a thorough test harness is ref*toring.

jimmySixDOF 6y ago

isn't that what Google are hoping to do with Fuchsia to make a next generation of Android that's not dependant on device drivers in the kernel ?

junon 6y ago
I can't see how they'd be able to achieve that, unless you mean simply that the device drivers would run in userland.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  Reinventing QNX will always be cutting edge

inopinatus 6y ago

At the point where people are making jokes about the Linux kernel making up X% of the GPU driver.