Xorg packaging

[Colin Guthrie]

Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
> Usually I dont buy milk in bare hands but in a container.

That's a very good example. In my distro (Mandriva) we do much the same
for Xorg and I'd imagine most other distros do the same. We provide meta
packages that do not, by themselves, contain anything, but just pull in
other packages due to their dependancies. e.g. we have a
x11-driver-video package that pulls in drivers for the most commonly
found cards (which in turn make our GUI tools for configuring X11 a bit
simpler as we know the driver is probably installed on the system.

You still get the milk but it comes in a nice container. The arguments
that it doesn't please users having a whole heap of packages to install
is IMO unfounded. It's as good as the distro makes it. One click install
is no problem Installing 50 small packages is the same as installing 1
big one, the progress bar in the GUI goes at pretty much the same speed!

As for developers, I'm a happy hacker.... erm no, that's a bit rich....
I'm a happy compilier of some of the latest and greatest X11 code. The
modularisation is excellent for me as it means I don't really have to
understand how *everything* works, I just need to compile my wee bit
that I'm interested in and away I go!

My 0.02

Col