Improving Xorg

[James Blanford]

On 28 Jun, conon wrote:
> I have noticed that recently ther have been more and more requests
> for help from users attempting to compile X.org from scratch.
> 

Many of them still seem to be trying to do it the old way - build the
whole enchilada.  Now all they have to do is build the part they're
interested in.

> In the past I have attempted this discusion in totaly the wrong way
> I admit.
> 
> If I have offended anybody - I apologize - My only excuse was 
> frustration.
> 
> I beleive that operationaly X.org is a more superior platform than
> XFree86
> 
> But I would like to know what the reason was to split the source
> packeges up so far.
> 
> While developers and packagers may love this format - others dont.

Speak for yourself.  I love the new format for the reason I mentioned
above.  I can have the convenience of the packages and infrastructure
provided by my distro and play with new features like aiglx and compiz
without having to "make World".  Gee, there's a cake here and I can eat
it and it's still here!

> 
> I have volenteered in the past to provide a build system with less
> source packages. Not to replace the current one's - but to
> supplement it.
> 
> I beleive that more and more users will try to build their own
> versions and will want a more build freindly method.

Take build.sh and comment out 90% of it.  Write a perl-cgi frontend for
build.sh so you can click on the components you want to build, fill in
your prefixes and it will fetch, compile and install it.

> 
> I would like to have a proper freindly discusion about this.
> 

I think the place for that would be the Xorg user's mailing list, but
I don't seem to be able to find one.  If there's a problem, I think it
has less to do with the build system and more to do with the information
needed to use it being scattered over multiple web sites and mailing
lists, generously mixed in with obsolete and misleading instructions.

The X.org Foundation claims to be the global steward of the X Window
System, but clearly they feel this means providing code for distros to
package for users.  While up through release 7.0 they provided user
documentation, that appears to have been abandoned for 7.1.

If, as you have noticed, more users are going to be using Xorg code to
build Xorg components themselves, any support for that is probably going
to have to be developed outside of X.org.  For example, Mozillazine was
developed for Mozilla users and Ubuntu Forums for Ubuntu users.

     -  Jim