Xorg packaging

[Egbert Eich]

Kai-Uwe Behrmann writes:
 > Hello,
 > 
 > while I would not say it as harsh as in the previous thread. Still, the 
 > few logic behind this email I can follow.
 > Xorg is supposed to be one project? A "rpm -qa | grep xorg | wc -l" gives 
 > me 46. Really.  Ok, including devel packages.
 > 
 > Let me tell you my situation. I am developing and packaging some smaller 
 > applications and need nothing more than to link against some X libraries. 
 > Simple? Everyone would think so. Packages needs to get build for many 
 > systems, each linking against different set of X libs. Now the xorg ones 
 > are not a few packages to install as in the past, but many and mostly 
 > differently named ones.
 > For each OS a different naming sheme and for each package a different 
 > subset. 

Hi Kai Uwe,

while I can see your point here I feel that X.Org is the wrong one
to address here.
X.Org has modularized the tree and this added some degree of freedom
on how to packages things.
It's the different distributors who decide how to combine and package
things. There is no such thing as canonical cross vendor dependency
names (at least to my knowlege). Each distributor packages things 
differently (according to its needs and taste) and also names things 
differently.

Even in the case of the mono tree this was true: different distributors
split up the tree into sets of different packages and even the naming
sceme was different.
The conclusion is there is no real good way to do cross vendor dependencies
(with a few exceptions).
But this is nothing that X.Org can fix or should try to get involved in
getting fixed.
ISVs have the same problem. It's an ISV vs. distributors issue.
OSDL has had a 'Desktop Architects Meeting' just on ISV issues.

 > 
 > I would guess that the xorg way of distribution costs now more time to a 
 > extended circle of persons.
 > 
 > Modularisation may have great advantage, no doubt.
 > As a form for distribution it is not good. There is simply no need to 
 > install only a subset of xorg. The project has one single license. And 
 > technically it makes a minimal difference to install completely or in 
 > single pices, if xorg will run the usual way. Or would you install 
 > plain vim or OpenOffice and install the config files and filters on demand?
 > 

There are reasons to split things up - some have been mentioned on this
thread. Furthermore different distributors have different goals so they 
package things differently.

Regards,
	Egbert.