HEADSUP: XFree86 changes

[Eric Anholt]

On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 05:38, Christopher Nehren wrote:
> > As part of this, I'll be converting the X Servers to use the (new, in
> > some cases) shared libraries rather than each linking against static
> > libraries built during the build of that server.
> 
> What about third-party drivers (like nVidia)? Will they run with these
> new libraries? What about performance? And how would people deal with
> building X software outside of the ports tree? Is there a test suite
> available?

The new code is essentially the same as XFree86 code initially, it's
just distributed differently.  Same performance.  Same ways of dealing
with X11 software outside of the port tree.  As far as binary drivers,
they'll work the same as they always have (not integrated with the
XFree86 ports).

The reason for the headsup is that there will be pain during the process
of changing over, mostly due to the portupgrade problem, but possibly
bugs resulting from the different packaging of the new software.

> I don't want to make this a bike shed (though I'm afraid that it will
> probably become one, unfortunately). What I know is that a functional X
> is very important to a large number of users. I use FreeBSD as my
> desktop system, and would hate to have to install Linux because of a
> lack of a functional X. I've done it before, and it's not a pretty
> experience. 

The point of this is to make X11 on FreeBSD more functional, by getting
bugfixes out faster and letting more people get involved in the
production of fixes and new code.  It's already been effective with
fontconfig and freetype being separate from XFree86.  If I expected this
not to result in better X11 support, obviously I wouldn't be doing it.

-- 
Eric Anholt                                eta at lclark.edu          
http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/         anholt at FreeBSD.org