Re: XFree86 3.1.2F plans?
On Fri, 30 Aug 1996, Shawn Asmussen wrote:
> I agree. I would very much like to be running the F beta in its entirety,
> and with Debian I do not know how to go about doing that and being
> positive I am not breaking anything in the process. I realize that the
> owner of this package does not plan to release any of the beta versions as
> a Debian package while there is no source code, but I for one would VERY
> much appreciate some sort of instruction on what all is neccessary in
> order to take out the stock Debian XFree and replace it with one of the
> beta versions without breaking anything in the process.
Okay. Here's how I got X 3.1.2[D|E|F] running. The background:
The machines I was given to work with have Mach64 chipsets and the
hardware appears to be so blasted _new_ I couldn't get the .deb X to
work. Ditto the X11R6 implementation of XFree86. I _had_ to go with the
betas, Debian or not.
This might make some people cringe, but I didn't "take out" the
Debian XFree--I didn't want to be forcing overrides of (what the machines
thinks would be) dependency problems for the next n+1 months--with it
installed but more than a little broken, I pulled the "D" beta stuff into
/usr/X11R6 and installed it right on top of the Debian X. Because it was
after D's expiration date when I did this, I then I pulled down the "E"
stuff and upgraded. Yesterday and Thursday, I pulled the "F" beta stuff
down and upgraded again. I'll continue to do this with each successive
beta, until the gamma is released.
This worked, first time. To date, every time. Knock on monitor.
It's wildy wrong from the Debian package database's point of view, but
that's life. It's as messy as hell, but dpkg's ability notwithstanding,
sooner or later, hacks must be perpetuated in order to get things to work
and messy things will be effected.
Things are going to become INTERESTING when the .deb version of
X11R6.1 has been released and its time to install it. Will I find files
that aren't accounted for by the .deb version? Will I find other random
weirdness? I'll deal with that when I run across it.
I realize that the question of "how do I install the betas without
making a mess of the package database" is as important as "how do I get the
betas running" to the last two or three people who've asked. I also
realize that this message doesn't even attempt to answer it, because I don't
have experience with the next phase of it (installing the .deb over the
betas), and I apologize for this.
David winters+@cs.cmu.edu
Office: 3503 WeH, x86720
MTFBWY
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