HEADS-UP: Modular X11 (ALL maintainers, please read)

Igor Peshansky pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
Mon Apr 17 04:24:00 GMT 2006


On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, Yaakov S (Cygwin Ports) wrote:

> I have been working on packaging the new, modular X11R7.0 for Cygwin for
> the last few weeks.  There's still a few dozen packages left, but the
> time has come to deal with handling some of the issues involved in this
> transition.

Good job!

> For those unaware of X11 internals, the major changes included in
> X11R7.0 over our current X11R6.8 are:
> [snip]
> 3) /usr/X11R6 is deprecated; like any other package, X11R7.0 is being
> configured with --prefix=/usr.
>
> The move to /usr will affect a number of packages.

Not only that, it will affect many users' shortcuts.  For example, many
users have a shortcut to xterm that says something like

c:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\run /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm [options]

Some have quite a few.  If we go through with this change, we'll need to
find a good way of dealing with the move so that shortcuts either won't
need to be changed, or can be changed automatically.

FWIW, we cannot use mounts, since shortcuts use Win32 paths.

> FIRST, the following two packages *must* be rearranged BEFORE the X11R7.0
> upgrade, in order not to cause collisions:
> [snip]
> xpm-nox:
> a) /usr/bin/{c,s}xpm.exe and /usr/share/man/man1/{c,s}xpm.1 will collide with
> those provided by libXpm.  These should have -noX appended to their names.
>
> SECOND, the following packages install into /usr/X11R6.  These should be
> repackaged into /usr ASAP after the X11R7.0 upgrade:
> [snip]
> [2] ghostscript currently provides two sets of executables; a non-X
> version in /usr and an X version in /usr/X11R6.  What is the reasoning
> for this, and is it really necessary?

Yes.  Its purpose is the same as xpm-nox -- to allow rendering postscript
to a non-screen device in batch mode.  People who don't have X may still
want to do this, for example to convert postscript to PDF.

> Status:
> By tonight, I'll have completed everything relevant in app, data, doc,
> lib, proto, and util.  That leaves font and xserver remaining.

You'll also have to think of things like X-startup-scripts.  While they
are not part of the X server proper, many people rely on them to start the
X server.  There may also be quite a few custom scripts with hard-coded
paths, but a simple symlink of /usr/X11R6->/usr should do the trick for
those.
	Igor
-- 
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