Hi Ian,

On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 09:31 PM, Ian Eure wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I’m wondering what the purpose of xorg-server-for-tests in
> gnu/packages/xorg.scm is?  It inherits from the normal xorg-server
> package, but drops to the older version 21.1.15, vs. the normal
> package’s 21.1.21.  No other changes are made.
>

The commit for this is
<https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/commit/7954560698b77bc4326041993aa394240a7697f6>
and the PR was <https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/4350>

The purpose being so that xorg-server can be updated on master,
otherwise the number of dependents is large. So xorg-server needed a
security-related update and this was (re-)done so that it could be made
directly. See, for instance,
<https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/commit/7954560698b77bc4326041993aa394240a7697f6>
where libxkbcommon using xorg-server means ~4.6k dependents for
xorg-server (well, there's probably some overlap already) or
<https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/commit/b26b379a28911ba5bf89a083522863f83bce068e>
with glad bringing ~1k dependents,

Indeed, there is no reason for xorg-server-for-tests to stay at any
particular version and (on a branch) it can/should be updated. I should
have done it on mesa-updates, but I think right now we are just waiting
for some final builds before merging, so it will have be on another
branch or iteration.

> As an experiment, I changed it to:
>
>     (define-public xorg-server-for-tests xorg-server)
>
> And rebuilt dependents.  This hasn’t quite completed, but
> everything’s built fine so far.
>
> Does it serve any functional purpose?
>
> Thanks,
>   -- Ian

I would expect no issues doing this, it is just a number of builds
question for doing it directly on master.

Hope that helps!
John

PS: Randomly opening up my guix-devel folder and just in time for a
message I happen to know the answer to :-)


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