Apparently, though unproven, at 00:56 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did opine thusly:
> Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off > the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have > been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the > user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had > done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been > able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may > could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not > ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it > themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a "stable" project. Actually it did last many years as a stable project. A very very very early ubuntu was the first to start using it. That gives it about 3 to 4 years or so - a long time in the software world. In relation to the total number of Gentoo users, the number affected by HAL was small indeed. I myself had no ill-effects across several machines (other than XML-induced frustration). Your experience, though painful, was not the norm. Sometimes devs have to make hard decisions, like break a small number of user's configs. At least they gave you a flag you could use. Once it was evident that HAL was a total POS, they have another hard decision: revert to no-HAL? What will that break? How many unknown setups out there that are the opposite of Dale? What about the next version of X.org that will not support HAL? Do they arbitrarily revert the default to sans-HAL only to make it something else next verion? That may piss off a lot of users. > I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config > of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the > same way now? I think you are colouring the whole canvas with your own singular experience. One mis-judgement does not make a wreaked ecosystem, and shit does happen. SOmetimes in this world you're the hammer, sometimes the nail. You were the nail. I don't disagree that HAL is an utter POS. I just don't agree with your reasoning that brought you personally to that conclusion. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
