[PATCH] Replace libx11 by libxcb

[Thiago Macieira]

On Tuesday 27. July 2010 15.33.35 Julien Danjou wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27 2010, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > It will not be merged if it removes the X11 code.
> 
> As you wish.
> Maybe I can resend the patch around 2013 then.

Ok. We'll see if HP-UX, AIX and Solaris still exist by then. Given current 
trends, I think they will be around.

> > And on that subject, what's the benefit of your patch?
> 
> Oh, sorry, I though that was obvious to a Qt developer.

I think you misunderstood. As a Qt developer, my objective is to support the 
largest number of platforms. libx11 is supported on almost all Unix, whereas 
XCB is supported in only a few.

There may be advantages to using XCB like you say:

> The benefit is dropping libx11 dependency and usage (old bad ugly code,
> you may know) and usage of asynchronous request/reply sequences. In the
> case of D-Bus, mainly in the atom requests. Which can be considered as
> ridiculously small, I admit.

Indeed, the advantages are very, very small. The drawback, which is that of 
supporting older X11 systems without XCB, is big.

Anyway, I'm not opposed to supporting XCB. I am opposed to removing X11.

If you can make both codepaths live in harmony, we can take the patch. 
Provided it doesn't make the code more complex, of course.

> But if you're not aware, there's a recent trend which is to drop libx11
> in favor of libxcb. Several Xorg apps have already been ported, and
> libx11 is using libxcb as a transport by default for a long time.

I know. And Qt has no plans to do that anytime soon. The reasons are above.

> New X.org katamari will therefore brings XCB in a mandatory way, whereas
> it was previously optional.

So you're saying that libX11 will be dropped? If it will, then that X.org 
release will be irrelevant.

> 
> I hope that's enough for you. But please, next time, try to dig a bit
> yourself.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
  Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
      PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
      E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
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