xkeyboard-config and modular release

[Sergey Udaltsov]

> It's nice to have a clean tree, but more important to not break
> existing configs, so if it's just consistency and cleanliness,
Not only this. In xorg 6.7, there is a mixture of layout supporting
"multiple layout" and the ones which do not. That is why people get
this nice GNOME "XKB error" dialog - for non-compatible layouts. And
there is no way to fix it finally without breaking user's config files
- for example, for Canadian users (Hungarian, Mongolian etc).
Inconsistency in existing tree is really outrageous - users ask when
they should look for variants - and when they should look for
standalone layouts (xorg has 4 'se' layouts, 3 'hu' etc - not
variants, layouts!).
In xkeyboard config ALL layouts are compatible with "multiple layouts"
feature (and they ALL are moved from the 'symbols/pc' subdirectory to
the 'symbols' directory - because old layout are not going to be
supported).

> users just because we can, that's a serious mistake I'd like to
> avoid.
Of course. Understanding this, we are trying to introduce the
compatibity rules, just to keep the compatibility on 'XkbLayout' level
(--enable-compat-rules). But for SOME people using 'XkbSymbols'
compatibility would be broken anyway - just because of the removal of
the old obsolete (unmaintained, incompatible!) code.
BTW, talking about configuration files. We changed the rules file name
to 'base' (from 'xorg' which was derived from 'xfree86'). But it
should not be a problem if xkeyboard-config is built with
--with-xkb-rules-symlink option - so here we are also trying to
protect users.
In a word - we realize the importance of the compatibility. And we are
trying to be as compatible as we can. But we realize we cannot be 100%
compatible - and since we are not, we are using this 'moment of
breakage' in order to clean up the tree and introduce some logic in
the layouts.
 
Cheers,

Sergey