On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Ralph Giles wrote:
> If I can insert another thread at this point, I'm curious about the
> requirement that libGL.so be in /usr/lib. Would someone be willing to
> summarize the reasoning behind this? I wasn't on the list when this was
> decided.
That's where it is on every other non-Windoze machine on the planet.
> (a) where a libary lives isn't a binary-compatibility issue, since it
> should be in the ld.so path anyway. So this is just about Makefile
> convenience.
The operative phrase here is "should be".
Trust me, if it CAN be in more than one place - then it WILL be in
more than one place and you'll get 1e6 emails of the form "I'm *CERTAIN*
I installed the right OpenGL for my SquonkMaster 3000 card - but I still
get no hardware accelleration".
That's the situation right now and at least 10% of the traffic to
mailing lists that support OpenGL/Mesa applications under Linux are
of that kind.
We certainly have to pick just one place - and /usr/lib/ is close to
a standard. The Mesa 'README' files have been telling people to
install a symlink *forever* and Mesa now install there by default
- other UNIXen have established that as *the* place. Most Linux
distro's are now putting it there (*finally*).
> (b) the draft specification says "The X-specific library direction
> (/usr/lib/X11) was also considered, but existing practice on Linux and
> other platforms indicates that /usr/lib is preferable."
Exactly.
> I looked around at
> the few systems I have access to, and saw this was indeed the case under
> IRIX, but Utah-GLX has always gone into /usr/X11R6, and that makes more
> sense to me for accelerated drivers that are part of the X server. What
> does Xfree 4.0 currently do?
There is a growing (and IMHO intensely annoying) trend to put everything
that either runs under, over or through X11 into the X11 hierarchy - and
it's pretty silly. We don't require everything that links to the math
library to be under /usr/math or some such - why should X11 be any different?
ALso, it's perfectly possible to have an OpenGL that doesn't use X (although
it would have a hard time meeting our ABI). There have been Mesa's that use
libSVGA for example. If there is a canonical place for OpenGL, there is no
special reason to fixate on just one of the things it happens to link to.
> I'm not asking that this be changed, now that the review period is over,
> but I'd like to understand the reasoning behind it. I agree e.g. software
> Mesa has traditionally been in /usr/lib...
...and also OpenGL under IRIX, Solaris, BSD and others.
> ..., but for X-integrated drivers,
> /usr/X11*/lib makes more sense to me, and it's really no more effort to
> support that option, since you have to link with the X libs there anyway.
> I suppose it's not "no" effort, since I've had to hack numerous configure
> scripts that assume Mesa in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib, but I hope you see
> what I mean.
Right. We want to avoid hacking more configure scripts by defining a SINGLE
place - so you always look in just one place and always find it.
Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hti.com
Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
