KDrive/TinyX newbie questions

[Jim Gettys]

On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 09:15, Raphael J. Schmid wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I'm mailing as to clear up some confusion I've built up regarding 
> KDrive/TinyX. That confusion mostly stems from the fact that looking 
> for KDrive/TinyX on Google, you get quite some pages, most of them 
> pretty old. Then I built it according to the informations on one of those
> sites, from the standard XFree86 4.3.0 sources -- but I've no idea if 
> what I got actually was KDrive/TinyX. And to add to all that, there's
> now an independant source base for an X server at freedesktop.org.
> 
> Now, my questions are:
>   - What exactly is KDrive, and what exactly is TinyX?
>   - Is KDrive/TinyX what I actually want for an old IBM
>     ThinkPad 701CS with a Chips & Technologies 65545
>     (1MB Video RAM)? It's been running XFree86 3.3.6
>     so far, but I'm looking for something less... overkill.

kdrive == TinyX.

Kdrive means "Keith's driver".  It is also called TinyX as
the resulting server is quite small.  It is an alternate
driver structure, that is more compact, and lacks facilities
for dynamic driver loading (which also saves space).

It is particularly useful for 

>   - If so, do I want the Xvesa server or the Xchips server?
>   - Should I use XFree86 4.3.0 or the stuff to be found in
>     fd.o's CVS repository?

kdrive/TinyX is not maintained in XFree86, and hasn't been
since just before 4.3 shipped.  You should probably
use the fd.o bits in the X server project if you want to
use kdrive, which are actively maintained and developed.

>   - How exactly do you compile KDrive/TinyX from those
>     sources, respectively, _nowadays_? According to one
>     of the sites I found through Google, you've to do this:
> 
>     #define KDriveXServer YES
>     #define TinyXServer YES
>     #define XvesaServer YES
>     #define ProjectRoot /usr/X11R6
>     #define BuildLBX YES
>     #define BuildDBE YES
>     #define KdriveServerExtraDefines -DPIXPRIV
>     #define BuildRandR                 YES
>     #define BuildXInputLib             YES
>     #define Freetype2Dir               $(TOP)/extras/freetype2
>     #define Freetype2LibDir            $(TOP)/exports/lib
>     #define BuildXTrueType             YES
>     #define BuildScreenSaverExt        YES
>     #define BuildScreenSaverLibrary    YES
>     #define SharedLibXss               YES
>     #define ServerXdmcpDefines
>     #define XfbdevServer               YES

This refers to the old XFree86 Imake build stuff.

> 
>     (http://www.rule-project.org/en/sw/kdrive.php;
>      not much explanation provided and it all looks
>      a little confusing).
> 
> I'd be grateful for even the most humble hints and/or pointers.

The Freedesktop bits use autotools; there is a lame script
for building the packages, or you can use jhbuild, which
is the longer term "right solution".  Jhbuild is documented
in the fd.o wiki.
                                - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys <Jim.Gettys at hp.com>
HP Labs, Cambridge Research Laboratory