Comment 24 for bug 173833

This bug is caused by an configuration change that is undocumented, the man page contains options that are no longer valid. This is made worse by the fact that the error message is very unclear.

Both problems are resolved in upstream git (freedesktop.org, not debian).

The Debian package is also mainained in git, which makes me a bit unsure of how to submit a patch for this. I guess I should do it the "git way" and not submit a normal debdiff here?

My proposed solution is to simply cherry pick 7f1e8146d4b13929a86a4b80f783a720c1b5573a and 11cf9c92c0d31d1058ec6c013b7126bd8909beba from freedesktop. Those two commits contain improved error messages, and an updated man page.

This is how I did this locally:
git clone git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-xorg/driver/xserver-xorg-input-evdev
git remote add xorg git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-input-evdev
git fetch xorg
git-cherry-pick 7f1e8146d4b13929a86a4b80f783a720c1b5573a
git-cherry-pick 11cf9c92c0d31d1058ec6c013b7126bd8909beba

I then verified that the package still builds ok, the man-page is updated, and when using an old xorg.conf Xorg.0.log now contains "No Device specified." instead of "cannot open input pEvdev".