I wish I could "Reply" to the messages in the archives. It would be
easier to insert myself at the point I desired. Oh well.
I hope I'm not sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong. If I am,
please let me know and I will take this to the support list. For
reasons listed below, I read through the Xorg-7.0 threads and
side-tracked myself on the "BLFS Expansion" thread. I think that there
is a big link between the two discussions and would like to offer my
$0.02. (These are 1964 pennies and adjusted for inflation now are
$1,000,000.02. Har! Har!). This could be long so please bear with
me. There are two areas: 1) practical and 2) philosophical.
First the practical:
I just finished LFS using LiveCD-pre3 because of the change to gcc-4.0.2
in SVN. It was during this build that I discovered Xorg-7.0. I want to
build it and that's when I discovered the Xorg thread in this archive.
I'm going to try to meld Alexander Patrakov's scripts for building
Xorg-7.0 in the LiveCD to DJ's methodology in the "Draft" version of
"the Book" at '~dj/xorg-book. My "extra variable" is that I use the
package user management system. I figure that if I can install this
behemoth as a package user, it can be installed as 'root.'
And a question: Should I take the reports of success and failure to the
support list, or are they OK here?
@DJ Have you discovered any 'gotchas' since Thursday. I can't tell
when you change the draft.
Now the philosophical:
I found it interesting that the discussion of the nature of BLFS
occurred after the appearance of Xorg-7.0. Maybe that appearance caused
the original question. Throw in the LiveCD and there is a lot of fat to
chew.
I don't think that BLFS needs to change. The tightrope is "how far to
go" in the build instructions. BLFS is not the "cookbook" that LFS is,
and states so right up front. I look at it as a compendium of packages
that may or may not be needed to get a tailored linux box running. If
someone wants an "out of the box" thing, there are LiveCD and other distros.
Individual editors may go more deeply in creating instructions than
others do. However, I think that in either case it's up to the builder
to research things to get the package to install.
The main thing I have taken from my builds of {,B}LFS is the learning.
That learning has evolved and become more sophisticated with each
build. But now there's Xorg-7.0.
This modular thing may be an exception rather than the rule. AND it's
entirely possible that 7.0 is an experiment to see if it will fly. I
don't use KDE or GNOME. Some people have called them modular--I don't
know. What I have learned is that to get the latest X installed, one
can use the monolithic method, the completely automated method, or the
completely manual method. It doesn't appear that Xorg-6.9 installation
would be that much different than Xorg-6.8.2. So I'm going to address
only 7.0.
That install looks rather mundane also except that one must worry about
build order and decide whether or not to "copy and paste" './configure
&& make && make install' a couple of hundred times or whether to script.
Additionally, there's the choice of what to include in an individual
Xorg build. I came away from Windoze and linux distros because I had to
install a lot of stuff I never used or that didn't apply to my
hardware. That same thing is true of Xorg 'til now.
My recommendation is to include, basic (define basic) instructions for
all three of these methodologies in "the book." I'm sure that there
will be a lot of "I want to just click and have it install" or "How do I
make this script run" questions. My solution is to sic Randy on 'em.
:-). I've already seen a complaint that DJ's method has "too many
instructions." That's like a musical piece having too many notes.
I'm getting too philosophical now and this is already too long. Thanks
for bearing with me. It's time that I began to stop taking from {,B}LFS
and start giving back.
Thanks for reading this.
Dan
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