-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:11:31 -0700
> Von: Alan Coopersmith <Alan.Coopersmith at Sun.COM>
> An: bochnig at pool.math.tu-berlin.de
> CC: OpenSolaris X Window System List <xwin-discuss at opensolaris.org>
> Betreff: Re: [xwin-discuss] It will be boring and painful to merge all my
> old nice
> bochnig at pool.math.tu-berlin.de wrote in a fox-gate commit message:
> > It will be boring and painful to merge all my old nice
> > then-clean pkgadd pkg-defs.
> > I start by simply copying over those pkgs,
> > which don't exist in the fox-gate.
> > Those are: SUNWxorg-gdm SUNWaperture SUNWxorg-freeglut
> > SUNWxorg-icewm SUNWxorg-mrxvt SUNWxorg-openmotif SUNWxorg-xkb
> > SUNWxork-sparc-stop-a-hack
> >
> > SUNWxorg-xkb contains files which I din't merge into
> > the fox-gate yet. MAYbe I will delete the defs soon.
>
> We don't have the XKB data files in the X gate since they moved to the
> G11n
> gate so the people who know localized keyboard layouts can maintain them.
>
> > SUNWxorg-gdm somebody must decide if the fox-projects wants an own
> version
> > of gdm. I cannot decide, as I'm not a project leader.
> > Therefor those defs might be out again soon.
>
> Why would we want a copy of gdm when there's already one in the JDS repo?
>
> --
> -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith at sun.com
> Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
Hello, I know, that's why I asked (instead of not mentioning it at all).
However, here are two - potentially valid - reasons:
#0) When you say "we have foo#N in this and that consolidation already [...]",
then you are talking about your distributor (Sun). And now the "unfortunately":
Not all consolidations interact as well with the community, as yours does. Not
all consolidations provide all of their code. Some things are difficult to
find. Some things don't build. Some things are temorarily not available to
external 3rd party distributors. Other externally available things may just be
out of date. A while ago G11n's xkb has been such a case (current status??). I
believe that it is very good to have the specialists from G11n maintain the xkb
tree's code base. But I would find it convenient (in the name of all external
distributors) to have xkb in the fox-gate, because without /usr/X11/lib/X11/xkb
Xorg is not usable whatsoever (except you use XMODMAP(1) in ~/.xinitrc). The
Distributor Sun could simply ignore the fox-gate's xkb tree, which would then
be part of it. Not build it and not build the package, but instead use the
packages created by G11n. External individuals could enable it on demand, and
in such a case the "make download" target should fetch the most recent version
of xkb from G11n. In case such a link doesn't exist yet, we would ask G11n to
create it for us.
#1.) GDM's xinerama autodetection code is a desaster. It is almost impossible
to patch the 1.3 server to make GDM work in certain configurations ("<=0
Screens" problem, which can have distinct causes). In GDM's code base, on the
other hand, it is close to trivial to work around the problem, by simply
disabling a few checks. I know that gdm is part of the JDS consolidation. But
in August it was not even possible to check out or download most of its src
code due to broken links (only the pkgbuild spec files and patches were
available).
It would be nice to have a good login-manager inside the fox-gate. At first I
thought of GDM. But GDM is a fat unstable pig. KDM is better (it's directly
derived from XDM, rather than being a [bad] rewrite from scratch like GDM), but
also KDM is too big.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLiM looks very interesting, and I got it built on
Solaris after some modifications, but the binary doesn't work. Therefore we
should actually return to the basics and learn to respect good old xdm, which
can do much more, than one would have expected, as long as it's being properly
configured: http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_XDM_Login_Screen_Customization
And this is what we should do (and I have done it for my so far internal
Natamar Distro-generator). Because xdm has a small footprint, is stable,
reliable and damn quick. As you know xdm is already part of the fox-gate for
some time. But I don't understand the following: In
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/fox/fox-gate/XW_NV/open-src/xserver/Makefile.inc
you set the server's "Build XDM-Auth-1 extension (default: auto)" from "auto"
to "disable". Why? It is still possible to start the resulting server through
xdm, but you would always be greeted by a warning message by default, sating
"UNSECURE SESSION". Of course you can disable that warning in xdm's config
files in /usr/X11/lib/X11/xdm/., but wouldn't it be better to fix the reason
that causes this warning to be printed in the first place, and hence to rather
put the opposite explicit statement "--enable-xdm-auth-1" into
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/fox/fox-gate/XW_NV/open-src/xserver/Makefile.inc
? Or at least to implicitly rely on the default setting, which is "auto"?
-
Best regards,
Martin Bochnig
Natamar Distribution developer
Software engineer and system admin
