On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 07:06:56AM -0700, Barry deFreese wrote:
> I was trying to build xorg (the monolithic stuff, not the modular) on
> GNU/Hurd and was manually hacking in the changes from the Debian super
> patch for xfree 4.3.0 (xfree86_4.3.0-0pre1v5+rmh.1.diff). If I get this
> to build would you all be interested in the changes?
>
> I would also consider attempting packaging it but that might be over my
> head. Is work already under way on this?
Apparently, whenever someone mentions this I bitch really really loudly,
so I might as well live up to this reputation that's been ascribed to
me.
There are several factors at play here:
* XFree86 is dead.
* The Xorg monolithic tree (e.g. X11R6.7.0) is viewed as a
short-term solution to the lack of a viable X vendor.
* The fd.o modular tree[0] is viewed as a short-to-medium term
solution to the lack of a viable X vendor, and the fact that
building X monolithically is wack.
* The medium-to-long term solution is to scrap the entire X
server architecture, and start again, using what we've learnt
from code that still has DEC copyrights from 1982.
* Changing stuff like this around (mainly, all the package
renames, as well as a mass patch rediff) within Debian is
actually really quite difficult, and very, very unlikely to be
allowed to happen before sarge's release.
Thus, in my mind, the only viable option is to stick with our heavily
patched 4.3, and to use that as a springboard straight to the modular
tree, completely avoiding the switch to the X.Org monolithic tree, which
is a lot of work for really very little gain.
I have some basic Debian work on the modular tree underway - as well as
a very good plan on how to do it - but this is waiting until the modular
tree is more functional and usable. As I'm the guy doing this, I spend
all my time on upstream, rather than Debian; the reality is also such
that not only do I aim to get the upstream side done as quickly as
possible, but that it is what pays my bills, not Debian X packaging.
I hope the articulation of my reasoning will satisfy the peanut gallery.
-d
[0]: And I don't mean KDrive, I mean with the monolithic server
codebase; see
http://freedesktop.org/~daniel/xserver-200405100146.tar.bz2 which
works if you run little-endian Linux, and want to build a static
server with either fbdev or ATI (acceleration works for the
latter).
--
Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org>
Debian: the universal operating system http://www.debian.org
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