[sane-devel] sane-backends 1.0.19 Code Freeze

[m. allan noah]

On Jan 23, 2008 11:13 AM, René Rebe <rene at exactcode.de> wrote:

> > > > Note #2:
> > > > The epson backend has joined our growing list of unmaintained
> > > > backends. As the SANE API matures in a future releases of SANE, these
> > > > backends could be dropped due to lack of support. If you have access
> > > > to scanners, documentation, or programming cycles, and are looking for
> > > > an interesting project, picking up one of the unmaintained backends
> > > > can be an easy way to get started with SANE.
> > >
> > > And this is exactly why Linux rocks, keeping supporting the even most
> > > ancient ISA, Parport, etc. devices, SPARCs, etc. and why it should be
> > > important to not break anything in the SANE world and instead gradually
> > > evolve it.
> >
> > your understanding of linux kernel and mine do not jive, as i
> > routinely see old unmaintained hardware drivers dropped. i have
> > several ancient scsi and ethernet cards which have not worked since
> > 2.0/2.2. If you want those old drivers to be forward ported to API
> > changes, then either we have to do it, or we have to get more
> > developers. I am hoping for the latter :)
>
> Ok, but that is rather seldom, with really many drivers even for
> old stuff around. However, I also found it unnice that the specific
> support for the Rise CPUs was just removed due to "not so many
> devices in the wild".
>
> However, with rather incremental changes chances should be
> high we keep even not so much maintained drivers alife.

yes- if one of us is willing to go into each of these ancient backends
and patch them each time the API changes. I was intentionally a little
alarmist so that some users of these ancient machines might step
forward and help us carry some of the load. Another option is a
sane1->saneX meta backend that could translate for old code, but we
need someone to write that too.

> > but your desire to keep older hardware working does not seem to jive
> > with the current state of the Avison bug reports...
>
> That is not really true. I have both devices on my desk and they just work
> for me. In fact I improved support for them in the last release cycle
> (software line packing was off for both a little).
>
> I have quite an aresenal of Avision based devices, and I even test my
> first AV630 SCSI scanner I brought nearly 10 years ago on some
> aging SCSI card like once a year :-)

i stand corrected. I am concerned about the regressions, but if you
feel that you cannot get the debugging info you need from the debian
bug reporters, then we may have to ship it, and do a 1.0.20 release
once we see who screams :(

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"