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More software broken by libx11-6 (1.0.3-7) upgrade (fwd)





Essentially every version (5.5, 5.6, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2) of the proprietary
(sigh, I know) data analysis package IDL (rsinc.com) segfaults when
trying to draw a simple bitmap (the IDL statement "tv,dist(5)" reproduces
the bug).  Considering that, e.g. IDL 5.5 has run on everything from
RH7.3 forwards, this change seems to amount to, in practice, a significant
ABI change.

There is a *lot* of buggy software out there, not all of which can be
patched.  The X protocol is one of those things that has "simply worked"
for binaries going back to the old times.  Keeping odd bits of its past
behavior would seem to be well advised.  Making this sort of intrusive
change in a core system library just before the Etch release is perhaps not the most advisable course of action.

For now, I've backed our scientific data systems back to 1.0.3-6.
(freenx on top of the nomachine libraries, by the way, also breaks at 1.0.3-7)

Don Barry
Cornell Astronomy



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