[Pkg-pciutils-discuss] Re: Removal of the lspci -X option

[Bill Allombert]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 08:05:12AM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> 
> I proposed the lspci -X patch to Martin Mares (pciutils upstream) and he
> dislikes it and will not include it upstream.  He thinks X should parse
> the information it needs from lspci -n, and I'm willing to go along with
> that.  The X maintainers (in private conversation) have said they do not
> currently use the lspci -X option and do not oppose its removal.

The issues lspci -X was attempting to solve was that 'lspci -n' format
has changed in the past, breaking the xserver-xfree86.config script, and
that 'lspci -n' is hard for humans to convert to -X format.

See <http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/05/msg00910.html> for more
detail about the format change.

Does upstream warrant that the 'lspci -n' will not change again in the
future ?

> The primary purpose of this mail is to make sure that everyone affected
> is aware of the decision to remove lspci -X from pciutils 2.2.1-1 and
> give them the opportunity to object.

The xserver-xorg config script still use "lspci -n" for the same purpose
as the xserver-xfree86 one, so the potential of breakage, should the
'lspci -n' output change again, is still there.

Furthermore, "lspci -X" allow users to easily compute the correct string
needed by the BusID field in the xorg.conf file (and asked by the 
debconf template).

So I would rather suggest to keep "lspci -X" and use it in
xserver-xorg.config.

A better option might be to implement "lspci -X" in a more generic way
that would be acceptable for upstream.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.