Re: [Libcdio-devel] RFC: Remove BSDi and OS/2 drivers

[Rocky Bernstein]

I don't think --enable/--disable options make sense here because it
has meaning only when you have OS/2 or or BSDI. Otherwise it is
effectively disabled.

And when you are running in those OS's, it is hard for me to imagine
that you would be happy with the disk-image drivers only, and not care
about the driver that actually controls physical hardware.

As for the comment "if they still work..", that's the problem: we don't know.

Nobody is actively maintaining BSDI or OS/2. For BSDI, there's no
evidence that anyone has used this in the last 5 or so years. For OS/2
I don't think there was ever much active development since the initial
patch 6 years ago.

For OS/2 in particular, if Natalia can compile it and it's still does
something useful, then we can leave it around. But if not, or I don't
hear from Natalia, then we deprecate. Simple as that.

If it turns out someone wants OS/2 and BSDI, the person can go back to
an earlier version of libcdio. If the newer features are desired, then
it is the obligation of that person who wants that feature to work on
this or convince someone else to.

That's how things get added done in libcdio and open source in
general. That is how cdparanoia cache management got added by Robert.

So if you want something, you need to support it or find someone
willing to do so.

If it's not supported by those who want it, then it's not worth the
hassle and overhead for the rest of us.

A little more on the hassle and overhead part. I think the reason this
came up is that Robert wants to make changes to the drivers. Having
drivers that aren't used and can't test makes this task harder --
unnecessarily harder in my opinion.

On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Robert Kausch <address@hidden> wrote:
> Maybe we should deprecate and disable those drivers by default, but allow
> enabling them by adding --enable-os2 / --enable-bsdi to configure.
>
> Thinking this further, we might add --enable-xy options for all drivers, so
> users could force building drivers on new untested OS releases without
> fiddling with the configure script. For instance, with --enable-freebsd the
> FreeBSD driver would be build even on a future FreeBSD 11 which the
> configure script does not detect yet.
>
> My autotools skills are not sufficient to implement this, though, so someone
> else would have to do it.
>
> Am 07.06.2014 17:33, schrieb Rocky Bernstein:
>
>> I don't believe there has been anyone working on, let alone testing
>> the BSDi or OS/2 drivers. Does anyone still use either?
>>
>> Perhaps then, these should be deprecated and removed. Thoughts?
>
>