Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:57:41 -0500 From: Alex Goncharov <alex-goncharov@comcast.net> To: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> Cc: ed@80386.nl, chuckr@telenix.org, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: x11 status Message-ID: <E1LcmMX-000Cp1-0P@daland.home> In-Reply-To: <20090226181225.GA3540@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> (message from Peter Jeremy on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:12:25 %2B1100) References: <49A4B9ED.5040705@telenix.org> <20090225065308.GO19161@hoeg.nl> <20090226181225.GA3540@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
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,--- You/Peter (Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:12:25 +1100) ----* | And along the way, they've dropped things like integration testing, | avoiding regressions and avoiding POLA violations. Since I don't care about the new X anymore, I can afford to express my opinion bluntly: the Xorg we have in ports now is a disaster. This opinion was arrived to at the cost of more than two weeks undoing the damage to my systems under the circumstances not conductive for such activities. | >> latest cvs image from Xfree86, and it built FAR easier that xorg, | >> faster, far simpler to configure ... | > | >Why should it matter how easy it is to build a piece of software? You | >can just run `make -C /usr/ports/x11/xorg install clean' or `pkg_add -r | >xorg'. | | Note that Chuck also mentioned faster (the conversion from imake to | configure added something like 30% to the time to build X.org for | absolutely no benefit - some pieces of X.org now take 4 times as long | to configure as to build) and easier to configure. | | Whilst the ease of building a port doesn't really affect the end | user, I strongly disagree: a FreeBSD user is almost by definition somebody who ultimately turns from using built packages to building ports from source, with options of personal preference. So, how things are done build-wise, does affect me, big time. If the only option to get the contributed (ports) software were using packages, I'd be using Debian, not FreeBSD. I have no desire to have HAL on my systems, for example, and FreeBSD had been giving me the option of not having it -- just build it with an appropriate option in /etc/make.conf. And other such things. Struggling with the Xorg 1.5 unfortunate upgrade, and examining the ports make files for Xorg/Gnome moved me to the ultimate decision: don't try to comprehend this mess and stick with something that works. I rolled back everything x11 to "xorg-server 1.4.2" and have no plans to upgrade it -- ever, on any of my systems: the old one works, perhaps not perfectly, but predictably, and why would I need a new one? So, for the last month I've been doing weekly rebuilds of ports with everything upgraded -- other that the /usr/ports/x11* trees, which will be frozen until I see that other people stop reporting serious Xorg problems, which may well never happen. This is a testament to the greatness of the ports system and an illustration to my claim: building a port does affect the end user. -- Alex -- alex-goncharov@comcast.net --
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