Bug#362750: xserver-xorg: 'xserver' provides dropped without explanation?

[David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net>]

On Sun, Apr 16, 2006 at 09:52:52PM +0300, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 02:09:57PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 11:33:08AM +0100, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > > On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 03:05:04AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > > The current xserver-xorg package no longer Provides: the virtual 'xserver'
> > > > package, which all xserver packages have done since time immemorial (or at
> > > > least since sarge).  As there is no mention of this in the xserver-xorg
> > > > changelog, I imagine this was removed in error.
> > 
> > > I removed it.
> > 
> > Are you going to deign to tell me why?
> 
> If you are relying on a working X environment, you just need to depend
> on the set of X libraries you use.  If you're relying on a specific
> server, you need to launch that server.
> 
> No server that I know of will reliably start and work when invoked
> without any DDX-specific parameters.  Not Xorg, not Xgl, not any of the
> KDrive-class servers.
> 
> Okay, Xephyr and Xnest will, but they are not what you want when you
> depend on the 'xserver' package.
> 
> Same reason I made xresprobe invoke /usr/bin/Xorg directly, instead of
> calling through the /etc/X11/X symlink and just hoping that it worked.
> 
> Although, upon writing this mail, I'd imagine that ?dm Depends:
> xserver-xorg | xserver, is an entirely valid use case, as they require
> an X server to be startable, use no DDX-specific parameters, and do not
> take responsibility for X server configuration.  If that's what you had
> in mind, then yeah, I'm wrong.
> 
> Either way, adding it back won't draw any complaints from me.  Merely
> noting that it was removed deliberately, not accidentally.

Cool, thanks for the explanation. I didn't quite understand why it would be
removed either when Steve found it. Since the *dm use case is a valid one,
I'll re-add it.

 - David Nusinow