Bug#659440: ITP: primus -- Low-overhead client-side GPU offloading

[Vincent Cheng]

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 12:33 AM, Mathieu Malaterre <malat at debian.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 2:41 AM, Vincent Cheng <vincentc1208 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 11:53 PM, Mathieu Malaterre <malat at debian.org> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 10:30 PM, Aron Xu <aron at debian.org> wrote:
>>>> Hi Cheng,
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Vincent Cheng <vincentc1208 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>>
>>>>> I just wanted to chip in and share the work I've done on primus'
>>>>> packaging, since there aren't any readily-available .debs (or a
>>>>> repository) for primus on Debian (at least, I haven't found any yet).
>>>>> The packaging is definitely a work-in-progress, but IMHO primus itself
>>>>> is pretty mature, and the only regression it has compared to
>>>>> optirun/VirtualGL (that I've found) is that it doesn't seem to work
>>>>> with nvidia-settings (a few games that I have which crash using
>>>>> primusrun also crash with optirun, so no loss there).
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~b2c8/debian/primus/index.html
>>>>>
>>>>> (or a direct link to the .dsc:
>>>>> http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~b2c8/debian/primus/primus_0~20121211-1~vc1.dsc)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I haven't tried your package yet, but I invite you to help me maintain
>>>> this package. There are many things on my plate already and it would
>>>> be good to work with you, ;-)
>>>>
>>>> I plan to work on packaging/uploading bumblebee after 9th this month,
>>>> it's not so urgent as bbswitch is still in NEW. Again, help is
>>>> appreciated!
>>>
>>> Since both packages are related to NVidia technologies, why not
>>> maintain them under the Debian NVIDIA Maintainers
>>> <pkg-nvidia-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org> group ?
>>>
>>> See:
>>> http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-nvidia-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
>>>
>>> 2cts,
>>
>> I'm indifferent to maintaining the set of packages that bumblebee
>> requires either within or outside of pkg-nvidia. On one hand,
>> virtualgl/primus is only being considered in Debian right now for
>> bumblebee support, but these technologies are not specifically tied to
>> Nvidia. Then again, bumblebee and co. will only be necessary with the
>> proprietary nvidia drivers once prime/dma-buf support for nouveau is
>> fully implemented and mature (I'm unsure about what the current status
>> of optimus support with the free drivers are, at this moment).
>>
>> I'll hold off on uploading my primus packaging until we come to some
>> sort of consensus...
>
> Please dont. My suggestion to use the pkg-nvidia-devel umbrella group
> was simply a mean of going thing going, not stopping them.
>
> I work within other umbrealla group and this help in situations such
> as (p-n-d makes it as easy chanel for discussion):
> - request DD upload from a DM
> - discussion on p-n-d at d.o on complex dependencies for package. If your
> package is a leaf in the dependency tree, then this does not apply to
> you.

I generally agree that maintaining packages in a team is better than
not doing so, when there are multiple people willing to work on the
package. For primus specifically however, I'm still not quite sure
which approach everyone would prefer; Aron has already said that he
thinks that primus should be maintained outside the team, and I don't
think anyone who's currently in the pkg-nvidia team (Russ/Andreas?)
has commented on whether or not they'd like to have primus maintained
within the team.

Being able to use pkg-nvidia-devel at lists.a.d.o rather than having to
setup another mailing list is certainly very convenient though.

> If you feel confidant, then please upload as-is.

I'm just a DM, so I'll need a sponsor once the package is fit for the
archives. (I've worked with Aron on a number of other packages before,
so presumably he'd be willing to sponsor my package, regardless of
whether primus ends up being team-maintained or not.)

How about this: I'll upload my work to collab-maint for now, and if we
decide later that we do in fact want primus maintained in pkg-nvidia,
we could always just switch over. :)

Vincent