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Re: Question about pidfiles



On Fri, Dec 04, 1998 at 10:02:30AM -0500, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 03, 1998 at 09:49:04PM +0000, Tom Lees wrote:
> > I am currently packaging imwheel. However, there is a problem.
> > imwheel wants to create a pidfile when it is run. However, this
> > is fundamentally against the way X works - it means only ONE
> > instance of imwheel can be run on one machine at a time (as
> > opposed to one per X display, which would be the correct thing
> > to do).
> >
> > What cna I effectively do about this (or should I email the
> > author and ask its behaviour be changed)?
> 
> Well it is free software (I assume ;) ) so nothing stops you from changing it.
> If you need to change it to work better on Debian systems...then I would
> suggest do what I do...
> 
> Change the behavior. Send a patch to the upstream author (they tend to
> love patches over complaints ;)) and upload. As maintainer you have
> authority over the package.... if the upstream author doesn't like it..
> then it wont go in the officasl version.
> 
> However...is there some reason to do this? I mean...what does the package do?
> maybe there is some other problem that needs to be solved before multiple
> instances can run on one host?

It does "scrolling" based on the wheel inputs of a newish mouse. Two methods:-
buttons 4 and 5 from the X server (display-portable), /dev/gpmwheel pipe and
a patched gpm. So yes, it does need this.

I think I will patch it to create pidfiles in /var/run/imwheel/, calling
them by the DISPLAY variable. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult
for eg the difference between localhost:0.0, :0.0, and :0...

-- 
Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk> <tom@debian.org>  http://www.lpsg.demon.co.uk/
PGP Key: finger tom@master.debian.org, http://www.lpsg.demon.co.uk/pgpkeys.asc.

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