ports/131016: xorg-7.4 renders system unusable!

[Alex Goncharov]

I am all right now... after a downgrade to the old X...

,--- You/O. Hartmann (Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:54:18 +0000) ----*
| After an compilation orgy and the weirdness of an obvious false xcb-XXX 
| ...
| combination for my keyboard and mouse and it works now for me - but with 
| the above mentioned result of not having access to my VT.
`-------------------------------------------------*
,--- I/Alex (Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:08:40 -0500) ----*
| The current problems:
| ...
|     ** The events generated by the keyboard (no HAL in the game) all
|         have wrong scan codes.
| 
|     ** Pressing an arbitrary alphabetic key once over an `xev' window
|        leads to a non-stopping flow of events (as shown in the `xev'
|        launching `xterm').
| ...
| I have to bring my laptop to a working state today, one way or
| another.  Anybody want to suggest something to try before I resort to
| more radical actions and the state and experience is lost?
`-------------------------------------------------*

So, I stripped my laptop off the new X components, downloaded the old
packages from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/All/,
ran `pkg_add *.tbz' -- and have a perfectly functioning laptop now.
I'll do the same with my desktop by the end of this week, I think.

The obvious downside is that I can no longer do my weekly port
upgrades, but I can leave without it, until the new X11 is reputed to
be well functioning.

This has been my first experience with so damaging an upgrade in
FreeBSD and I will be much more conservative with port upgrades in the
future; unfortunately if everybody is hesitant to be on the cutting
edge, how will the problems be reported and fixed?

It is interesting that in the port tree there are directories for (I
assume less tested, less reliable) "devel" versions, of say, `firefox'
and `emacs', but none of that sort for much more dangerous X11 stuff:

    $ ls -d www/firefox*devel editors/emacs*devel x11*/xorg-server*devel
    ls: x11*/xorg-server*devel: No such file or directory
    editors/emacs-devel/ www/firefox-devel/

Would be a good idea, I think.

-- Alex -- alex-goncharov at comcast.net --