Development plan -- time to move forward

[Kevin E Martin]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 11:24:59AM -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Monday 25 April 2005 11:00, Kevin E Martin wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 04:38:23PM +0200, Julien Lafon wrote:
> > > They *may* be useless if you do not have Xprint clients.
> > > xlsatoms is in the app component and xlsprinters and
> > > xprehashprinterlist belong there too unless xlsatoms, xlsclients,
> > > xlsfonts and so on are put into the X11 library component.
> >
> > That is not a good argument.  The X11 library is universally used with
> > the X Window System -- one can make an argument libX11 is the public
> > interface to the X Window System.  On the other hand, Xprint is not
> > universally used, and to build xlsprinters and xprehashprinterlist you
> > must have libXp available.
> 
> Unfortunately libXp is effectively required everywhere.  If you link xdpyinfo
> with Xprint support and then take that binary to a system without libXp, it 
> will not run, the linker will refuse.  Every java implementation known to man
> requires libXp as a runtime linker dependency, so if you don't have libXp, 
> you don't have java, even if you're not going to print with it.
> 
> RedHat does not support Xprint, but they are forced to build libXp anyway.  
> Likewise, when Gentoo builds Xorg with USE=-xprint, the client library is 
> still installed for binary compatibility.
> 
> What a terrible design.
> 
> X's extension library mechanism could suck-start a Harley.  We really should 
> take a clue from GLX when we deploy XCB en masse, and provide a way to query 
> the implementation for required extension functionality.  Until that time, 
> every xlib-based extension library is effectively mandatory.
> 
> > Also, I would think that you would be happy to have them with libXp,
> > since this means that someone who wants the libXp component would also
> > get these tools.  However, if you can make an argument that these are
> > standalone apps and not just Xprint utilities, then I think we can move
> > them back.
> 
> Everyone has to have libXp, for the same reason everyone has to have libXext.
> But not everyone has to have xplsprinters.  The Xprint utilities belong in 
> xorg/app, not in xorg/lib.

These arguments could be generalized to most, if not all, extensions.
Should we move all of them back to app or just the ones for Xprint?  I
have no strong preference here, but I lean toward moving them all back.