X.Org app dependencies on xcb-util libraries (was: [PATCH:xwininfo] Convert from Xlib to xcb)

Alan Coopersmith alan.coopersmith at oracle.com
Thu Jun 24 08:20:10 PDT 2010


One question remaining before I push my xwininfo port to xcb - are we okay
with stable bits of the X.Org katamari depending on the unstable libraries
from xcb-utils?   This uses xcb-event & xcb-icccm - obviously both could be
replaced by inlining the necessary support, but code duplication kills
maintainers, so it's not my preferred solution.   (I have even been wondering
if the multiple copies of "dsimple.c" in the apps should be replaced by a new
library, but don't have that much energy/time at the moment.)

Since we have tinderboxes building both xcb & the X.Org apps, we should
get notified quickly if an API change to xcb-utils breaks one of the
xcbized apps and can fix the app to adjust.   The remaining issue is one
of packaging - is this going to trap distributors into DLL hell
if they get dependencies on different/incompatible versions of xcb-util?
(Will ABI breaks to xcb-util libraries always result in .so.X version
 number bumps so that they can co-exist if needed?)

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-        alan.coopersmith at oracle.com
	 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System



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