Re: [gentoo-dev] News item: Deprecation and removal of legacy X11 input drivers.

[David Seifert]

On Thu, 2020-04-02 at 00:44 +0200, Piotr Karbowski wrote:
> Title: Deprecation and removal of legacy X11 input drivers.
> Author: Piotr Karbowski <slashbeast@g.o>
> Posted: 2020-04-02
> Revision: 1
> News-Item-Format: 2.0
> Display-If-Installed: x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
> Display-If-Installed: x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
>
> The Gentoo X11 Team is announcing the deprecation and future removal of
> the legacy X11 input drivers x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse and
> x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard. As of 2020-05-01 those input drivers
> will be masked for removal.
>
> These drivers have been deprecated for many years, first by
> xf86-input-evdev and
> then by xf86-input-libinput.
>
> The only use for those drivers remain in deployments which intentionally
> opt-out of using udev, as both evdev and libinput require udev during
> runtime, however given that upstream has already removed the Linux
> support from xf86-input-keyboard, future X11 releases will no longer
> support xf86-input-keyboard on Linux rendering those installation
> infeasible to use without udev.
>
> In order to ensure fraction-less upgrade path for future X11 releases,

nice Freudian there ;)

> we have decided to deprecate those drivers that are not in active use by
> pretty much any installation of Gentoo.
>
> No action is required from end-users who are already using libinput (or
> evdev). To check which driver is in use, one can use
>
>     $ grep 'Using input driver' ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
>
> For the systems running xorg-server as regular user (-suid
> +elogind/+systemd) or by running
>
>     # grep 'Using input driver' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
>
> for those that still runs xorg-server as root.
>
> If however neither libinput or evdev is in use, one should append
> 'libinput' to the INPUT_DEVICES variable inside /etc/portage/make.conf
> and update @world with new USE flags
>
>     # emerge -N @world
>
>