It seems things aren't all rosy between CodeWeavers and DXVK, as developer Henri Verbeet has written into the Wine Development mailing list to give more details.
The developers working on Wine seem to be going their own way with their Vulkan plans and most thought this was due to DXVK being written in C++, a different license and so on. Apparently, that's not the main issue as Verbeet notes and they didn't pull any punches:
In February 2018, we reached out to Philip Rebohle—the author of DXVK—to start a conversation around whether there were any areas we could cooperate on. One obvious area was the vkd3d shader compiler, which translates Direct3D shader byte code to SPIR-V (much like DXVK has to do), but there would have been other possibilities, like sharing the DXGI implementation, or using a scheme like vkd3d where Wine's d3d11 could have optionally loaded DXVK as a regular shared library. That e-mail went unanswered. Now, I appreciate that different people have different ideas about what's acceptable and what isn't, but personally I think that's extremely rude and uncivilised.
They continued:
Nevertheless, e-mail gets lost sometimes, sometimes people are busy, everyone gets a second chance. So a few months later, since I was organising WineConf 2018, I sent Philip a personal invitation to attend WineConf, and perhaps discuss things there. That invitation went unanswered too, at which point I was pretty much done with DXVK.
It is my understanding that since then both Jeremy White and CodeWeavers' partners at Valve have tried reaching out to Philip on the subject, but evidently with little success.
Personally, this all feels like it's getting a little too heated for me. Still, it shows that there's clearly some communication issues that need to be solved between all parties involved for the better of us all who use Wine, DXVK and so on.
Hopefully the situation can be resolved in an amicable way, calling someone out in such a way doesn't seem particularly fair though. I've picked up on emails months after they were sent before, it's very common when you're busy and working alone. I did speak to Philip Rebohle after this, who said they would rather stay out of "unnecessary drama in public".
The good news, is that they are working on an official wined3d Vulkan backend going by a codename of Damavand which will be interesting to see.
You can see the mailing list entry here.
Cheers, Phoronix.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
DXVK development will continue and third party clients such as lutris will still enable you to install dxvk on wine configs so whether wine and dxvk are playing nicely or not is really irrelvent.
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 25 January 2019 at 11:59 pm UTC
Quoting: benjamimgoisSaddly this is not new in the opensource realm. Duplicated efforts due to Gigantic egos always generate duplicated / triplicated efforts. This is the same old DEB x RPM, KDE x Gnome, upstart x systemv , Snap x Flatpak.... While opensource is fighting it self, closed source OS like Windows and OSX concentrate efforts in what really matter.. . . lock-in?
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 26 January 2019 at 12:04 am UTC
Quoting: WorMzyI'm glad the joke got across ^_^Quoting: SalvatosQuoting: liamdaweThis is a very one-sided argument right now and we really have no idea what is actually going on, we have the words of one person.Frankly, I have to question why you published this article given those very same arguments.
Did you try reaching out to Philip for comment?
What makes you think he'd respond even if Liam had? He clearly doesn't check his email. :P
Quoting: liamdaweWe are a news site.I mean, it can be hard to separate the two aspects of this and I understand the informational value of saying that Wine are doing their own thing for Vulkan, but as far as the public is concerned I feel it would have been enough to say that they reached out to Philip and didn't hear back so they did their own thing. Everything else feels more like airing other people's personal grudges and I don't know that we need to hear about it. That's just my opinion and you're free to disagree, but I wanted to give feedback.
We publish news and interesting happenings about major projects.
It's not difficult to understand why. Many people have wondered ever since DXVK was created, if it would become part of Wine and this is some kind of insight into the happenings from one side.
Edit: And yes, I did try to speak to him first and he stayed out of it.
Also, I feel like mentioning that "X has declined to comment" or some such should typically be included in a news article, especially in an issue like this since it shows that you made sure not to stoke the flames of an issue Philip may have actually been unaware of.
QuoteIt is my understanding that since then both Jeremy White and CodeWeavers' partners at Valve have tried reaching out to Philip on the subject, but evidently with little success.
I have the impression that Philip Rebohle has firm opinions about approaches to software, what works well and what leads to problems. I have the suspicion maybe he simply doesn't like Wine's style of coding, doesn't think trying to converge and make DXVK work with Wine would be fruitful but instead would maybe tangle him up, but doesn't want to tell them to their faces that he thinks their way of doing things is broken. So, sidestepping maybe.
Mind you, I have no interest in defending this vaporous comment since it is likely to be wildly off base.
Quoting: SalvatosNo matter which way I frame it, I'm never going to please everyone.Quoting: liamdaweWe are a news site.I mean, it can be hard to separate the two aspects of this and I understand the informational value of saying that Wine are doing their own thing for Vulkan, but as far as the public is concerned I feel it would have been enough to say that they reached out to Philip and didn't hear back so they did their own thing. Everything else feels more like airing other people's personal grudges and I don't know that we need to hear about it. That's just my opinion and you're free to disagree, but I wanted to give feedback.
We publish news and interesting happenings about major projects.
It's not difficult to understand why. Many people have wondered ever since DXVK was created, if it would become part of Wine and this is some kind of insight into the happenings from one side.
Edit: And yes, I did try to speak to him first and he stayed out of it.
Also, I feel like mentioning that "X has declined to comment" or some such should typically be included in a news article, especially in an issue like this since it shows that you made sure not to stoke the flames of an issue Philip may have actually been unaware of.
They said it in a public mailing list, knowing people are watching and subscribed to it including plenty of non-developers wanting to keep tabs on it. It's not up to me to cut their words or to try to suggest they're saying something different.
I've added a small note on what Rebohle said in Discord.
Quoting: liamdaweNo matter which way I frame it, I'm never going to please everyone.Fair enough. Cheers.
They said it in a public mailing list, knowing people are watching and subscribed to it including plenty of non-developers wanting to keep tabs on it. It's not up to me to cut their words or to try to suggest they're saying something different.
I've added a small note on what Rebohle said in Discord.
Nevertheless Jan 26, 2019
Quoting: liamdaweHere's some extra perspective for you.
CodeWeavers emailed me a while ago out of the blue to thank me for my coverage of Proton. I emailed them to ask for an interview, they didn't reply. A week later one of them is on a podcast with BoilingSteam.
I didn't get salty about it, it's just the way it is. It's why I find the situation so bemusing. Emails don't get answered all the time.
Exactly. In my experiance not answering emails often means "cannot talk about it", "cannot talk about it and also can't tell you why", "don't want to talk about it for my own non-public reasons", or something of the like.
And maybe (speculations) Codeweavers wrote about it all, because they got asked so often and did want to answer that it's not on them.
I guess we should trust them all to resolve this in their own .. or not if they choose to.
Last edited by Nevertheless on 26 January 2019 at 12:03 pm UTC
Nevertheless Jan 26, 2019
Quoting: GuestQuoting: liamdawethe wording was very harsh though.
Are you referring to this phrase: "but personally I think that's extremely rude and uncivilised"?
That's very harsh? We have really come to this?
I miss the "Nvidia, fuck you!" days...
And it's also more precise! ;-)
Quoting: GuestHarsh because it's basically shaming another developer because they didn't return emails. It's ridiculous.Quoting: liamdawethe wording was very harsh though.
Are you referring to this phrase: "but personally I think that's extremely rude and uncivilised"?
That's very harsh? We have really come to this?
I miss the "Nvidia, fuck you!" days...
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