Gentoo Archives: gentoo-alt

From: Fabian Groffen <grobian@g.o>
To: gentoo-alt@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-alt] Use host X11 via virtual package
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 12:16:31
Message-Id: 20110206121612.GE17190@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-alt] Use host X11 via virtual package by Konstantin Tokarev
1 On 26-10-2010 19:03:23 +0400, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
2 > I think on some platforms having another set of X11 libraries and headers
3 > inside prefix is redundant.
4 >
5 > X11 is very conservative technology. Recent changes are in the field of direct
6 > hardware interaction, but I believe it is not possible to use DRI inside prefix
7 > if X11 implementation in prefix is not compatible with host one, so it could not
8 > be reason for need of keeping updated X.org version inside prefix.
9
10 One of the ideas behind Prefix is that you use as little as possible
11 from the host system, or that you hide a slightly different installed
12 (but compatible) package, by a host-system wrapper.
13
14 > On Linux host we already have X.org, maybe different version than in portage
15 > But API and ABI is keeped stable between releases. Mac OS X >= 10.5 also
16 > provides X.org.
17 >
18 > Some platforms provide alternative implementations of X11, and I guess they must
19 > be API compatible with X.org. These include Windows SFU, older Mac OS X (<= 10.4)
20 > and older Linux using Xfree86, maybe other Unixes too.
21 >
22 > I propose to add virtual ebuilds for using host X11 libraries instead of building own.
23 > Any objections?
24
25 No objections (I'd imagine eselect X11), other than that it would be a
26 Prefix local change. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle to go through
27 to do it, but if it's done, it should be initiated at gentoo-x86 level,
28 not Prefix.
29
30
31 --
32 Fabian Groffen
33 Gentoo on a different level