So what next?

[John Dennis]

On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 05:06, Paul Anderson wrote:
 
> I can understand that converting to a new build framework is 
> just something that gets in the way of the real fun of pulling
> in, evaluating, and experimenting with new features on their platform
> of choice.  It would be nice if we could find a way to balance 
> these short- and long-term needs accordingly.
> 
On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 12:06, Jim Gettys wrote:

> Much of the development is very hard to get properly tested
> in a timely fashion if the way to build and install those
> features implies building and installing all of an X 
> distribution.

Not only is development and testing hard with a monolithic tree but so
is distribution and installation. One of the biggest headaches with X we
have here at Red Hat, and I believe this will be echoed by all the other
major distributions, is that X is huge and wants to build and install as
one enormous package. This creates all manner of problems, not only for
our internal development, but also for deploying on thousands of
installed systems.

>From our perspective anything which can be done to break X up into
smaller more manageable and INDEPENDENT software packages is a huge win
and one of the most important "features" we would like to see
incorporated into X development. Moving to a more modular build system
is not something that is getting in the way, rather its viewed in some
circles as essential for the continued health of X technology.

John