open-vm-tools in base

[Steve Kargl]

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:44:38AM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:26 AM Steve Kargl <
> sgk at troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 09:55:23AM -0600, Josh Paetzel wrote:
> > >
> > > There is some precedent for this.  Driver(s?) that were once a
> > >  part of the tools have been moved to base already.  The VMXNET3
> > > driver is an example of this.
> > >
> >
> > There is also precedent for removing a working driver from
> > base and putting it into ports.  See drm2.
> >
> 
> Not the best example to cite as there's been a lot of bumps with that and
> the future distribution model is unclear to me.
> 

Oddly enough I disagree. :-)

Does the problems for open-vm-tools occur in freebsd-stable,
where the kernel ABI should be stable?

Freebsd-current is the development tree, and kernel changes
might break 3rd party software.  drm2 is a perfect example.
In-base drm2 was working just fine and kept up-to-date with
kernel changes when it was attached to the build.  This seems
to be what Josh wants for open-vm-tools.  Once drm2 was detached
from the build it was ocassionally broken, and someone (often
times me) would find and report the breakage.  If open-vm-tools
is added to base, and then someone adds emulators/open-vm-tools-devel
which supercedes in-base open-vm-tool, we're back to the in-base drm2
situation.

Finally, open-vm-tools is used by what percentage of FreeBSD users?
1%? 5%? 50%?

-- 
Steve