Nvidia, stable ABI

[probonopd]

Module ABIs have changed - drivers MUST be recompiled against this Xserver verison, otherwise the Xserver can crash or not even start up correctly.

Proprietary NVidia drivers might break: they still haven't managed to do do even simple cleanups to catch up with Xorg master for about a year. All attempts to get into direct mail contact have failed. We're trying to work around this, but cannot give any guarantees.

What is the exact issue with Nvidia? I think the X server should be architected in such a way that vendors such as Nvidia can expect stable driver ABIs and don't have to change their drivers all the time.

So, what exactly necessitates a change that makes existing Nvidia drivers unusable?

Would also be good to hear from @aaronp24 what could be done in X11 implementations to minimize unnecessary work for Nvidia.

[kkmzero]

Stable ABIs on Linux? Since when? 😆

[probonopd]

This is about XLibre, not about Kernel ABIs. So the same on non-Linux OSes such as *BSD.

[oiaohm]

My issue 32.

X11Libre/xserver#32

If we are talking about the least long term work for Nvidia then we drop third party DDX support completely no more third party driver API/ABI from the xserver.

With the modesetting driver implement glx through egl proxy from xwayland and call it done for majority of users.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/wayland-support-for-the-575-release-series/333827

Yes loss at this point is effectively two features lost by not using Nvidia driver in xserver.
Stereo rendering using GLX/EGL/Vulkan
Implicit SLI Mosaic

Would also be good to hear from @aaronp24 what could be done in X11 implementations to minimize unnecessary work for Nvidia.

Yes a lot of ways maintaining the DDX user space driver for xserver long term is unnecessary work for Nvidia,

We use to have UMS as in usermode setting drivers they have basically been got rid of.
We have DDX drivers in xserver that wayland compositors don't use so lets get rid of these as well.

Move to a common generic usermode in xserver that does not care what GPU you are using. GPU just provides KMS and working EGL and/or Vulkan and call it done.

[metux]

The Xserver (xfree86) ABI is only stable within one major release. That's how it's been all the time.

NVidia recompiles parts of their driver for each new ABI, just link everything together into one binary.
I really wouldn't recommend doing so, but that's how they've done it all the time.

[SuperDuperDeou]

Move to a common generic usermode in xserver that does not care what GPU you are using. GPU just provides KMS and working EGL and/or Vulkan and call it done.

I second this: a driver built entirely on top of vendor neutral tech would reduce duplicated effort, and also make the project less reliant on some corporation dropping a proprietary driver from the sky.