Re: Upcoming xorg-server upload

["Jesse W. Hathaway" <jesse@mbuki-mvuki.org>]

I am reposting this reply to include the Debian XSF list as suggested by Cyril:

Cyril Brulebois <kibi <at> debian.org> writes:
>  1. http://pkg-xorg.alioth.debian.org/reference/squeeze-backports.html

I understand that the prospect of backporting more the 50 source packages is a
large burden on the XSF team, but I would encourage the team to revisit the
decision not to backport all of Xorg.

There are couple of reasons why backporting the entire stack is preferable.

  1. In general people use backports to obtain features not available in the
     stable release of a package. There are features in newer versions of the
     xorg server which would be valuable in stable.

      - For example xorg server 1.8 has 'Coordinate Transformation Matrix'
        support which is necessary when using a touchscreen or tablet mouse
        with more than one screen.

        - http://www.x.org/wiki/XInputCoordinateTransformationMatrixUsage

  2. Cobbling together a different version creates another version to support
     that is different than the one in testing or unstable. This increases the
     XSF teams maintenance burden as well as making it more difficult for the
     user to understand what version they are using or how to file bugs against
     upstream.

  3. Related to (2) the average user has little understanding of the xorg
     components. They just want to grab the latest version and see if it fixes
     their problem or has the feature they were missing. Backporting all of
     xorg satisfies this use case.

Thanks,

Jesse W. Hathaway