Release Version Planning / Roadmap

[elguero]

Hi @displaylink-emajewsk or anyone else at DisplayLink.

I have a question about the new way of providing official releases that is being observed.

There is a new release for Ubuntu on Synaptics site, v5.4.1. It contains a tarball of the evdi devel branch. Is this the plan from now on when it comes to releases of the DisplayLink driver? Are there going to be no more tagged/released versions of evdi to work with? Are releases going to always be based on the devel branch?

Even though this site says the latest release is 1.9.1 and the evdi being bundled with the latest DispalyLink driver once compiled says 1.9.1, they are not the same code. This is going to create confusion. There is a disconnect now between releases on this site and what is being distributed as far as versioning of evdi.

Can you update the community on the current roadmaps or plans? This will be helpful for the OS variants that have tried to support your drivers on other platforms when it comes to the planning and organizing of releases. It would be nice to understand how to support the releases with minimal effort or what adjustments need to be made to our current processes.

Thank you,
Michael
(member of displaylink-rpm)

[eyJhb]

Very wel put @elguero !

I am one of the maintainers of DisplayLink for NixOS, and the disconnection between EVDI and DisplayLink gives me a headache each time that DisplayLink updates. :)

Consistent tagging for evdi would be nice.

[ztoufie]

The fact that nobody from DisplayLink has even bothered to respond to this request really speaks volumes as to their commitment and continued collaboration with the open source community.

Also there has been a v5.4.1 release for Ubuntu on 6 Sep and yet nothing has flowed through here, no updates, tags nor releases.

It feels like it's time to look at alternative hardware that don't require DisplayLink drivers. I've done this before for Broadcom networking equipment and quickly dumped them and replaced them with Intel equipment that has far better support on Linux, out of the box.

[groovyman]

I spent more than 320€ to buy a useless docking-station, Sad to say, but the support by display-linlk is not existing and i expect that it will never come back. By this all ttatements on the linux compatibility made by the manufactors of docking-stations a dirty advertiging lie.

Instead of buying an exprensive docking-station (that enbales more than one USB-DP supported display) it would be better, to buy a simple mini-pc, connect it over USB (o a direct crosslink-IP cable) and then to use RDP (inside Wayland) or Xrdp the display the contents of the remote computer.

DisplayLink ... shame on you!

[displaylink-mlukaszek]

Okay guys, I get the frustration. We didn't intend to create confusion and difficulties in packaging evdi in other distros.
Re 1.9.1, thanks for the flag - must be something in our process that we can improve to avoid those kind of things from happening.
What we package in our full driver is supposed to be released as source here, and tagged correctly so the release on GitHub always matches the code we ship in the driver. Consistent tagging is definitely something we want to get better at.

As for the transparency of the development, this is something we are discussing as well. As you can see when we do release, this project is often being worked on in another internal repository (you can tell by the dates of commits that appear), and the GitHub remote is getting updated some time before we bake the full driver for DisplayLink. There are still some complexities to resolve before we can always just work here on GitHub, together with the community - but I can say that is definitely the goal.
Branching strategy that doesn't seem consistent lately is also a result of those discussions happening.

We expect to land a few key fixes to evdi to enable newer kernels again soon, and we are hoping to follow with a full driver release in December. @elguero and @eyJhb - we would love to make your work easier, so we'll be in touch with more concrete updates when we get nearer to the release. Thanks for your support in enabling more distros, it is truly appreciated.

[askb]

Having the same issue with Displaylink! :(

[FBobbioC]

Version 1.10.0 of evdi (https://github.com/DisplayLink/evdi/tags) works perfectly with DisplayLink 5.5 Beta (https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu) in Slackware64-current. I am currently using it with a Dell D3000 USB 3.0 docking station, with 3 monitors

[ztoufie]

Okay guys, I get the frustration. We didn't intend to create confusion and difficulties in packaging evdi in other distros. Re 1.9.1, thanks for the flag - must be something in our process that we can improve to avoid those kind of things from happening. What we package in our full driver is supposed to be released as source here, and tagged correctly so the release on GitHub always matches the code we ship in the driver. Consistent tagging is definitely something we want to get better at.

Hi, just a gentle reminder to tag/release your 5.6 code please, as I notice that there's been an official release on 20 May, but not seeing any new tags/releases here.

[displaylink-emajewsk]

@ztoufie evdi 1.11 tag has been pushed alongside 5.6, but you're right about the missing release page. Thanks!