[PATCH xdm] Re-introduce the ability of staticcally linking the greeter.

[Gaetan Nadon]

On Tue, 2011-11-08 at 23:34 +0000, Matthieu Herrb wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 04:05:06PM -0500, Gaetan Nadon wrote:
> > On Mon, 2011-11-07 at 19:57 +0000, Matthieu Herrb wrote:
> > 
> > > This logically reverts 7e223d3ac6c0d549a7d6e4dcc86a053e19594028.
> > > There are still cases (in particular OpenBSD) where the shared
> greeter
> > > is not desired.
> > 
> > My reading at the time was the static version was there because some
> O/S
> > did not have loadable libraries support (this greeter seems to be
> very
> > old code). Can you add in the commit text (if you know) the reasons
> why
> > OpenBSD would not be able to use a shared library? Less chances of
> being
> > removed in a few years from now. I thought all platforms could use
> > shared libraries.
> 
> OpenBSD/vax (don't laugh please) is still a.out and doesn't have
> shared libs. Yet it can run xdm (no X server though since the ability
> of statically linking the drivers was lost a few years ago :().

Fair enough, consider adding this info in the commit text.

> 
> But this is not the main reason. Basically the shared object doesn't
> give us any benefit. So why bother with the extra complexity and
> failures cases that it introduces ?
> 

I had considered doing just that at the time. I recall having seen on
the net a site showing how to create a custom greeter. That made me
choose shared vs static having the (wrong) assumption that all platforms
supported shared libs.

> > 
> > > 
> > > BTW, Ubuntu 11.10 and Fedora 15 both ship xdm 1.10 with the shared
> > > greeter disabled too.
> > 
> > And we don't if there are reasons for that or if it is just an old
> build
> > script that works...
> 
> As Alan pointed out, there is no real reason to keep the shared object
> version as long as no one provides alternate greeters that could be
> plugged in to replace the default one.
> 
> If you want to shrink the source, I would rather drop the support for
> the dynamic greeter.
> 

I am not opposed at all to a static only build. Perhaps a next patch
should do that. This would certainly reduce module complexity.

> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/attachments/20111108/c3501d49/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/attachments/20111108/c3501d49/attachment.pgp>