x11/nvidia-driver: Improve pkg descr

[ziaee]

Summary

This is not the be-all-end-all, but this a massive step in closing gaps.

+ use upstream wording "unix driver" to encourage search keywords.
+ provide supported software in-band, this closes several bugs.
+ note legacy driver supported versions are stable and will not change.
+ provide hint that url leads to supported hardware lists.

PR: 266682 (340: driver abi does not support latest xorg)
PR: 244421 (304: abi incompatibility since latest xorg)

[junchoon_dec.sakura.ne.jp]

x11/nvidia-driver/pkg-descr

9

NVIDIA Unix Driver Archive website would be worth linking here.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/

Older-than-shown versions can be seen via "Archive" link there and also "What's a legacy driver?" link there provides informations about which legacy branch is the last one that supports specific GPUs.
But linking each ones would be excessive.

[ziaee]

x11/nvidia-driver/pkg-descr

9

I agree, but we already do in the port's WWW.

[junchoon_dec.sakura.ne.jp]

x11/nvidia-driver/pkg-descr

9

Exactly. I understand that.
But as of added 9th line, it would be handy to put it here, too, especially reading it at cgit or local repo.
And more, quite unfortunately, cgit server (at least the one hosting for Japan) is often caught overbloated accesses that causes "backend fetch error".
This is why I've proposed this redundant thing, with minimal way.
How do you think, including the unfortunate situations?

[kbowling]

I'm not really seeing this as a general improvement

The NVIDIA UNIX driver supports NVIDIA graphics hardware.

It is offered in several variants to accommodate vendor support cutoffs which are enumerated in the vendor's release documentation.  Legacy drivers receive less or no updates depending on the vintage, and the Xserver ABI may be outdated and need additional configuration to run.  Please see vendor and online documentation.

We don't ship old Xorg versions so I don't think it is worth mentioning their versions, it is a generic problem on all UNIX and you work around it with Xorg server flags to run on modern Xorg.

[ziaee]

I'm not really seeing this as a general improvement

It might not be yet. Here's my problem: I am the only one maintaining the handbook, but I have absolutely no idea how this stuff works. That's honestly unacceptable. I can't even get a desktop working most of the time, to the point of almost exclusively working in vt. By putting the information in-band, with the software, now it's where the maintainers can see and reach it. This has been a massively successful strategy with manpages.

and you work around it with Xorg server flags to run on modern Xorg.

I did not know that. We don't have that in our docs anywhere, and I wrote to use older versions of Xorg in the handbook. Give me a few days to search around, then rephrase everything, and I will rework what I have to specify the xorg ABI instead of the Xorg version. Hopefully, this illustrates the problem I'm trying to solve. The hanbook is too far siloed off to be the only store of information. The important information instructions needs to be in-band. This is also consistent with the instruction given in Porter's Handbook Section 3.2.1:

"A well-written pkg-descr describes the port completely enough that users would not have to consult the documentation or visit the website to understand what the software does, how it can be useful, or what particularly nice features it has. Mentioning certain requirements like a graphical toolkit, heavy dependencies, runtime environment, or implementation languages help users decide whether this port will work for them.

The URL that used to be included as the last line of the pkg-descr file has been moved to the Makefile."

[kbowling]

The handbook has been problematic WRT NVIDIA drivers, it duplicates and is often outdated information, so I would support centralizing some of this to the installation and making that a slimline section. In particular I don't think the handbook should elaborate hardware or versions, it should bounce to NVIDIA for hardware support policies and somehow link to the packages in a reasonable way but that may mean an external service like freshports?

I'd suggest the ABI issue should be a pkg-message that is conditionally enabled for the affected ports. See for instance https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/nvidia-incompatible-abi.86096/

[ziaee]

I'd suggest the ABI issue should be a pkg-message that is conditionally enabled for the affected ports.

What I wanted to do initially is something like "+= PKGDESCR" for the lower ports. We only need one line for each like I have in the diff.