Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 16:42:46 -0700 (PDT) From: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <giffunip@yahoo.com> To: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> Cc: x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: XFree86 4.4 port ?? Message-ID: <20040521234246.25838.qmail@web13424.mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0405211558450.23400-100000@pancho>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--- Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 May 2004, Pedro F. Giffuni wrote:
>
> > The update to XFree86 seems rather painless
>
> except for the 'support' aspect of answering all the questions and
> dealing with whatever new breakage there is (with that many lines
> of code, _something_ will always break). I think this is what has
> everyone holding back -- no one, so far, has seemed to want to step
> up and do that in the way Eric has up until now.
>
Yes, as I said I do appreciate Eric's efforts to get us near the point of using
X.org. I think we are not ready yet though and XFree86 4.3 doesn't seem to be
particularly better supported than 4.4, as can be seen from the unresolved PRs
in the database.
Furthermore, XFree86.org is interested in bug reports from 4.4. Ever since I
started using FreeBSD and XFree86, David Dawes has always been maintaining and
supporting the BSDs.
> > changing to X.org will break many
> > ports, in particular those that don't use correctly $(X11BASE).*
>
> The appropriate solution to ports with bugs is for someone to submit
> a PR against each one so that it can be fixed. If we followed the
> above philosophy to its illogical conclusion, we would never be able
> to make any changes anywhere in FreeBSD.
>
> Further, fixing each of these ports can be done independently of
> any server upgrade, with fairly low support burden; there's no
> reason not to get started on them.
>
I agree on all points, but fixing takes time, and most importantly, someone
has to do the actual work. Using a different X11BASE is one issue, but X.org,
will probably have many others so we should have a can-of-worms opening
strategy. I propose:
1. Update to XFree86-4.4
2. fix, or at least report issues caused by (1)
3. Change X11BASE to /usr/X11/ (as documented in XFree86).
4. fix, or at least report issues caused by (3)
5. Change to X.org (if it's ready and stable), with the required change in
X11BASE.
6. fix, or at least report issues caused by (5).
Hopefully (6) will be very small thanks to having done (1) and (3) previously.
cheers,
Pedro.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040521234246.25838.qmail>