On Jan 23, 2008 2:16 AM, Jeremy Henty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [I'm not sure if blfs-support is the best list for this - I'll happily > take it to another list if people think it's appropriate.] > > There's a big discussion on the x.org list about the state of the Xorg > tree. Apparently the complete tree hasn't built in over a year. Some > people are arguing for merging the drivers back into the server tree. > One contributor flamed that the whole idea of building Xorg from > source is now a joke. (Others disagreed and posted various build > scripts.) Also, in an earlier discussion more than one person claimed > that the 7.3 release was inferior to previous 7.x releases in > important ways.
The 7.3 release is inferior in some ways, but I don't believe it has anything to do with building it from source. The input system received a major overhaul, and it's just pretty raw in spots. I've been using 7.3 for quite some time now, and I've haven't had any problems for my use. > So just out of interest I'm wondering what do BLFS developers think of > the state of Xorg, particularly of building from source? Is it > getting flaky? Should the Xorg devs be sorting their act out or are > things OK as they are? I regularly follow xorg and don't think there are any major problems. When you say the complete tree, it needs to be said that the part of the tree that didn't build are ancient, unmaintained drivers. Do people need the xf86-input-aiptek? Do most people even know what it is? So, to me, the only major problem is that it's not being communicated which drivers are unmaintained and need somebody to step up if they want that driver to continue to work. All the drivers you care about have always built. And in fact, someone pointed out that there is a document that shows which parts are maintained: http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/doc/xorg-docs.git;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=MAINTAINERS As for who's build script to use, it would certainly be nicer if there was a single script that received all the maintenance and could be the entry point for anyone to build xorg by source. In fact, there is one (quite a few, actually), but it doesn't get enough love. But the fact so many people showed their build scripts highlights how trivial it really is. The difficult part is figuring out what order to build in. It would be nice, though, if someone stepped up and maintained one good script. It could be you or me, it's not rocket science. http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/util/modular.git;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=build-from-tarballs.sh It should also be mentioned that people discussing the modular/monolithic merits aren't discussing putting the whole thing back together. Nobody has argued against having the libraries and apps away from the server. They're talking about moving the drivers back in with the server build since the API between them is what breaks and causes ancient drivers to not be able to build anymore. Having them together would highlight the breakage immediately instead of relying on an extra step to build all the ancient drivers. -- Dan -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
