Feel free reproduce this mail anywhere you like. Reply to the list
<debian-x@lists.debian.org>. Do not send mail to me privately.
* To use DRI you need a proper kernel version (not to mention a card
supported by current DRI code). Unfortunately there is no official Linux
kernel with the proper support. Use the latest 2.2.18pre or 2.4 test
kernels.
* There was a problem with the MIT-SHM (shared memory) extension at one
point in the phase2 Debian packages, but it has been resolved.
* The X Strike Force webpage is offline due to a disk crash, but it will be
back when the machine is recovered. The unofficial XFree86 .debs are
available at <http://samosa.debian.org/~branden/woody/>.
* Where to send mails: this part is very important.
* DON'T MAIL ME DIRECTLY ABOUT PROBLEMS WITH X. This is not only
personally harassing since I've asked people thousands of times (plus
once in nearly every message I send to the Debian lists), but it keeps
other people who may have seen the same problem, or know of a fix, from
helping you.
* <debian-user@lists.debian.org> is the proper support list for problems
with the officially released Debian XFree86 packages (3.3.6).
* <debian-x@lists.debian.org> is not in general a user support list at all;
only Debian-specific problems with my XFree86 4.x test packages should
be sent here. In other words, problems with the *packaging* belong
here. Problems with X itself should go to the XFree86 lists.
* <newbie@xfree86.org> is the proper support list for problems with XFree86
from users who don't know much about the X Window System, diagnosing
problems, or fixing them. This includes most of the people who send me
private mail asking for help.
* <xpert@xfree86.org> is the proper support list for problems with XFree86
from people who knowledgeable and motivated enough to help fix them
(by, e.g., compiling X themselves from source, trying different versions
from CVS to try and narrow down problems, or hacking source code
themselves).
* The packages I have made available of XFree86 4.x are not official, and
not stable. I do not support upgrades between versions of these
unofficial packages. If you have problems, downgrade to 3.3.6 or purge
the X packages before changing versions. I *do* want to hear about
package overlaps and other problems experienced when installing the
phase2 .debs on a system "naked" of X, or when upgrading from official
3.3.6 packages. Mail reports of such to <debian-x@lists.debian.org>.
* Impatience and complaining from people not motivated to contribute some
of their own effort to solve problems will delay, not speed, the
process of creating official debian packages for XFree86 4.x. I'd like
to have stable packages of XFree86 4.x out myself. Life would be
hunky-dory. But they're just not ready yet.
* Stop complaining about the size of these experimental packages,
particularly xlibs-dev; they contain everything that they are supposed
to per Debian policy, and will get much smaller when I do the official
release because I will be stripping them. I am presently not stripping
these packages because I am hoping some enterprising users might be
willing to help track down bugs by providing backtraces. (In any case,
the gargantuan xlibs-dev package is not even necessary unless you're
compiling X clients -- but keep in mind that you MUST NOT compile
official Debian packages against these libraries until XFree86 4.x
.debs are officially released.)
Here is a list of issues that are delaying official Debian XFree86 4.x
packages:
* The Mesa problem (specifically, the lack of libGLU.so) really has to be
sorted out upstream if Debian is going to have a sensible handling of
Mesa in our distribution. Alternatively, I can stop shipping the Mesa
stuff altogether in the XFree86 packages until support is ready, but
this will pretty much leave DRI out of the picture. I'd appreciate
feedback on doing this. The XFree86 versions of the Mesa and OSMesa
libraries can be added into woody at a later date without causing any
real disruption. I'd appreciate feedback on the possibility of
releasing 4.0.1-1 (or 4.0.2-1, or whatever) without the XFree86 version
of Mesa. What little feedback I've had so far indicates that people
would rather wait for upstream to resolve this, so that we ship XFree86
with its own version of libGLU.
* Another big issue is support for all of Debian's (released)
architectures. This really sucks right now because I can't get patches
merged myself, Dan Jacobowitz (PowerPC), and Ben Collins (SPARC) are
both very busy with other things, and I'm staying on bleeding edge CVS
so it's impossible for these guys to keep up. Portions of the
architecture-specific patches are being made to some of the most
volatile areas of the XFree86 source tree, and involve hairy stuff like
varying architecture-specific details in PCI bus management. I really
don't like being i386-centric but upstream is changing very rapidly
right now, and it's hard to pick a flag day for Debian. 4.0.1 is
practically ancient by now. Over four and a half megs of patches have
been applied upstream since then.
* I have merged the fonts previously in xfonts-cjk into the xfonts-base
package (in anticipation of extension of many of the fonts in the -base
package to include characters beyond those in ISO-8859-1). However,
apt wants to *remove* xfonts-base entirely, leaving the old, obsolete
xfonts-cjk package. This really sucks since I've got all the package
relationship fields correct per the Packaging Manual. When I mentioned
this to Culus he waved his hands and started mumbling about
NP-completeness, which is what he usually does when someone finds a
problem with his problem resolver.
Thanks for listening.
--
G. Branden Robinson | You should try building some of the
Debian GNU/Linux | stuff in main that is modern...turning
branden@debian.org | on -Wall is like turning on the pain.
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ | -- James Troup
Attachment:
pgpHX8u8du2mt.pgp
Description: PGP signature