Re: nVidia drivers: series introduction, upgrade, deletion.

Hi ! With this message I would particularly focus on one problem with the nVidia driver "maintainability" via the rpmfusion_nonfree repository. The new stable nVidia driver 177.80 has dropped support for Geforce serie 5 (NV3X) cards. This means that if we update xorg-x11-drv-nvidia to the 177 serie in our stable release, users will have their X sessions to collapse. Hence, we need to set up a simple policy about how to have the nVidia driver updated when support range for cards has changed. The update will have to append quietly if done within a fedora stable release (F-8/F-9 currently). But may(1) need a "documentation regression" (2) If users want to switch to the lastest or want to upgrade (From F-8/F-9 to F-10) having missed the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia to xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-173xx transition. So, to sum-up and try to keep this simple: We need to introduce a new legacy serie as the 173xx version, splited from the "main" xorg-x11-drv-nvidia. - In F-8/F-9 (Fedora stable - despite I wonder if we will introduce 177 in F-8). We will rename xorg-x11-drv-nvidia to xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-173xx (along with the related nvidia-kmod to nvidia-173xx-kmod). That way, users with NV30 will not experience breakage). Then we will introduce the 177 driver as xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-lastest - In Rawhide (F-10) we will just update xorg-x11-drv-nvidia to 177 and Obsoletes the 177 serie (xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-lastest) introduced in F-8/F-9. IMO, I would prefer to introduce xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-lastest in Fedora stable either or not it is a beta version. But I would like to reserve this when the support range for nVidia hardware has changed. Note on the nVidia beta drivers and repositories behaviors. Previously on livna.org, we used to have a separate branch for packages with F-? to F-?.testing from our svn, ending in the livna-testing repository. Having such beta drivers in livna-testing doesn't prevent the stable driver to be updated (or kmod to be rebuilt), and leads to separated repositories. As opposite, "fedora like" repositories behavior is to push update from updates-testing and then, once QA, to the updates(stable).repo. This behavior is particularly needed for the nVidia driver update. But having a separate repository for blending edge beta version is missing. One argument not to split "-beta" as another package is that there are already lot of series to maintain (nvidia, 173xx, 96xx, 71xx). And the reason why we split serie is driver range support (3), not driver status (stable/beta). So as such, beta can also be a legacy serie. (even if that's not probable). And it will be easier to test a beta activating another repo than to uninstall/reinstall a package.(4) So any questions/wonders/advices ? (This scheme will be introduced in rpmfusion only IMO) Nicolas (kwizart) (1) Depend if the parallel mode if validated. (still in WIP, but won't be activated that soon). (2) I mean, users will have to RTFM. (3) We can also have a nvidia-custom specs for having a particular version packaged, but that will not be provided within the repository. (4) Keep in mind that driver update often needs reboot (or done in init3) to prevent version mismatch and other side effects.