libxt and other applications porting to libxcb

[Alan Coopersmith]

On 6/30/25 17:16, pyrus at bsdmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> How come libxt and other applications within the X repository that use libx11 aren't converted into using libxcb? I realize that X11 is considered obsolete compared to Wayland, however, there's still widespread use of X11.

For the specific case of libXt:

Partially because libXt has been considered obsolete for even longer, since the
widespread adoption of toolkits like gtk & Qt that don't use it, but mostly
because the libX11 types are part of the libXt API, so replacing them would
create a new library that's not compatible with the existing users, and thus
isn't really useful to anyone.

For non-libXt applications:

I've converted some, as have a few other folks - the rest simply haven't had
anyone interested in doing the work step up and do it.  Many of the applications
under https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/ aren't widely used any more,
with modern applications having taken their place.  There's a weird mix of
base X11 utilities which are fairly commonly used (xdpyinfo, xrandr, etc.)
and ancient applications to bootstrap the X11 environment in the early days
which have better alternatives today (pretty much any editor vs. xedit,
any mail reader vs. xmh, any other window manager vs. twm, etc.).

> Also, why not bring libxaw3dxft to the repository, and partially port that and its dependencies to libxcb as well?

Honestly, because I don't know what that is, and I don't remember anyone else
ever suggesting it is something that X.Org should adopt.  But if it's based
on libXaw, which in turn is based on libXt, then it's going to be full of
references to libX11 types like Display instead of xcb_connection.

-- 
         -Alan Coopersmith-                 alan.coopersmith at oracle.com
          Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris