Disable xterm and XRX builds per default / [Fwd: CVS Update: xc (branch: trunk)]

[Egbert Eich]

Keith Packard writes:
 > 
 > Around 11 o'clock on Jan 24, Egbert Eich wrote:
 > There is significant precedent for no longer building xterm by default on
 > linux platforms.  There are many packages which X.org includes in the
 > distribution but which are maintained and distributed by other people --
 > expat, FreeType, fontconfig to name a few.  These used to be built within
 > the X.org tree on all systems, and now most config files default to using
 > the system provided ones.  I don't recall any X.org Board involvement in
 > the decision to change this for a a particular platform.

You say 'linux platforms' and this correctly describes the situation. There 
are other platforms where things may be handled differently.

When we did the 6.7 release we have disabled the build of FreeType, expat 
and other pieces by default for Linux and some other platforms where we 
know that there exists some consensus to use the upstream solution.
We may do this for more packages and other platforms.

Yet, I fail to see why we should override the generic default definition 
as our OS overrides will take care of this without damaging things for 
other platforms that may still depend on this.

OK, we may discuss if we should change paradigms - however to me it 
seems to be doubtful if it's worthwile to engage in lenthy deliberations 
on what to do in a tree that will have reached its end-of-life soon.

Once we go modular this entire discussion will have become irrelevant as 
everybody is welcome to pick those pieces (s)he needs from whereever may
be the best source.

 > 
 > Xterm is a particularly egregious case here -- while the other external 
 > packages are included because X.org packages depend on them, Xterm is 
 > included purely because it used to be maintained by X consortium staff.  
 > It has not been maintained by anyone within the XFree86 or X.org trees for 
 > many years.
 > 
 > Disabling it by default is almost entirely beneficial as now most users
 > won't have their vendor's version of this package overwritten by whatever
 > X.org decided to include in their release, or whatever the user has
 > downloaded from upstream.  I would further support the removal of xterm
 > from X.org CVS and its replacement with a note pointing at the upstream
 > maintainer.

As above this begs the question if this needs to be done for a tree which
will likely not see any further major release. 
Secondly I would rather opt for a per-platform solution as people using 
other platforms than Linux may be in a different situation.

[...]
 > 
 > > I personally would prefer to have a per-distributor configuration 
 > > file which can easily be included when a certain distro is detected.
 > 
 > I would not like to see this automatically done though; X.org should build
 > precisely the same on every platform.  The existing distribution detection
 > mechanism has confused me several times, making it very difficult to
 > predict what will be built on any particular platform.  Is there precedent 
 > in other well maintained packages for this kind of automatic customization?

I doubt it - and maybe we should not go this route either.

I'm not sure if the distribution specific configuration stuff in linux.cf
(so far it only esists for RedHat and Debian) is still used today.
If not it may be removed - but this should be done by someone representing
the distro.
If it is however chosen to keep this distro specific stuff around I would
like to see it moved to separate files.


Egbert.