xorg update w/ nvidia-driver "Failed initialize default colormap"

[Graham Todd]

Rebuilding everything and its dependencies after the latest mega update 
patch to X (thanks for the great work!) I got a seemingly innocuous error 
trying to start X:

NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize default colormap

Various -bpp -depth and other flags had no effect and the same problem 
occured using vesa drivers. Rebuilding the X server with NEW_XORG flag 
(and the dependencies that were automatically rebuilt) gave me 
xorg-server-1.12 which started and works (i.e. the colormap error 
disappeared - of course a rebuild of everything X and its dependencies was 
needed to get mouse and keyboard drivers working, etc)

It seems that something the NEW_XORG flag enables might also be required 
in order to fix the colormap error for 1.7.7 server. Any tips for tracking 
down what that might be?  Perhaps a BUILD_DEPENDS issue or a PEBKAC error 
triggered by the order in which I installed and upgraded the libraries? 
I did find a few similar sounding error reports about "Failed initialize 
default colormap" but it was unclear how or whether the problems were 
resolved.

I should note that I don't mind running the latest/greatest X, but I'm 
assuming the xorg-server-1.7.7 should continue to work with the recent 
updates to X libraries. As a "fix" for the above error upgrading to 
NEW_XORG might not be practical for everyone.

cheers,

Graham Todd