[MPlayer-dev-eng] [RFC] The future of some old vo drivers

[Roberto Togni]

Hi,
 this is a list of vo driver that may depend on old hardware, dead
libraries, and obsolete kernels:

- vo_ggi: the project url (http://www.ggi-project.org) is dead. libGGI
is not included in debian stable nor oldstable, you have to go back to
squeeze (oldoldstable) to find it.

- vo_zr and vo_zr2: video output for the Zoran decoder card. They
depend on video4linux 1 interface, that was dropped in kernel 2.6.38
released in march 2011 (and deprecated long before).
The card seems to be supported also over video4linux2 in current
kernels; so if someone with a compatible card wants to update them he's
welcome to do it. As they are now, compilation fails.

- vo_vidix, related vos (xover, xvidix, vosub_vidix, winvidix, cvidix).
Can anybody confirm if they still works? I have no compatible card. The
vos compile correctly. Do we have any helper working on modern systems?
The dhahelper from /vidix says that it's compatible with 2.2 and 2.4
kernels; does the svgalib helper still exist?

-vo_tdfxfb: the kernel still supports tdfxfb (checked on 3.18), but I
have no idea if the interface is still the same. The last relevant
change is r11130 from 2003 (a fix for gcc3.11). Can anybody test it?

-vo_tdfx_vid: another 3dfx vo, depending on some kernel helper
in /drivers. The last relevant change is from 2003. Does it still
work with a modern kernel? Can anybody test it?

-vo_3dfx: yet another 3dfx vo, also depending on some kernel helper
in /drivers. The last relevant change is from 2005. Does it still
work with a modern kernel? Can anybody test it?

-vo_mga and vo_xmga: they depend on an helper in /driver. The last
relevant change is from 2004 (2010 for xmga), and 2008 for the /driver
part. Does this still work with a modern kernel? Is the driver part
still required to use it?
This was a very popular card with MPlayer developers, so I hope that
somebody can test it and report.


The main reason for this mail is to understand if these driver are
still functional with a current kernel and MPlayer version; and if the
target hardware is still in use today (as a reference I had a 3dfx and
an S3 card in my pentium1, retired in 2002).

Most of this code is harmless, since it's not even usually compiled;
this also mean that it could be totally broken without anybody noticing
it.

Are these drivers still useful, or can we drop some of them?
Please let me know your opinion, or even better your test results.


Ciao,
 Roberto