Should 9.3 carry a warning about NEW_XORG

[Ian Smith]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2014 14:01:32 -0600, Warren Block wrote:
 > On Sun, 6 Jul 2014, Ian Smith wrote:
 > 
 > > It seems that if you upgrade from 9.1 or 9.2 you will need to manually
 > > intervene, either way .. please correct any incorrect assumptions:

That still applies.  I've done my best to hunt down every reference, but 
some are more likely up to date and authoritative, like 
'[FreeBSD-Announce] temporary WITH_NEW_XORG repositories': [0] 
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2014-July/001570.html

and others, while important, may be more speculative and/or out of date, 
eg https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/WITH_NEW_XORG [2], the only ref I 
can find covering what should or shoudn't work on older graphics 
hardware with Xorg server 1.7 and 1.12 and various FreeBSD versions.

 > > . if you don't wish your ports updated to new Xorg you'll need to add
 > > WITHOUT_NEW_XORG to make.conf before updating any relevant ports, though
 > > - inconsistently? - any installed packages, including those on the DVD,
 > > will still be for old Xorg.  Until you are sure this is the safer way -
 > > but you have to know about it when upgrading.
 > > 
 > > . if you do want ports updated to new Xorg and you have older graphics
 > > hardware you'll need to compile a VT kernel to get vt switching from X
 > > back .. and you'll need to add the new repo to get new Xorg packages.
 > > 
 > > Seeing that a perhaps not miniscule proportion of 9.x X users will need
 > > to do some manual configuration on upgrading to 9.3, a relevant WARNING
 > > in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html should be helpful.
 > 
 > I can agree with the idea of a note, just have no clear idea what it should
 > say.  If people are shown how to stick with the old xorg, they will be
 > marooned and ports that require the newer version will not work. People that
 > upgrade may find their hardware no longer supported.  That's sort of the
 > price of progress with technology.

I don't hold with the notion that if people are told how to remain with 
old Xorg for a stated period, they are less likely to upgrade at all.

I'm looking here at the immediate time reference, in that 9.3-RELEASE - 
possibly the last extended release on the 9.x branch - appears likely to 
be wrapped up within a week or so.  So this is not about Development but 
Release Engineering - traditionally a far more conservative process.

On being marooned: re 9.3, it doesn't seem quite as urgent as some are 
proclaiming.  For old Xorg packages we have till 10.0 EOL at 31 Jan 2015 
and even if for some reason that changes, at least until September 30th, 
according to [1]: http://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup
Presumably WITHOUT_NEW_XORG should work for that long, which is a more
comfortable timeframe to consider options and upgrade (or not) at will.

John's intervention was just-in-time in this perspective.  I've checked 
his post to X11 and read much of that list's archives over the last 3 
months, and I can appreciate the difficulties.  However John's hardware 
_should_ be supported (with vt(4) according to [1] above), and despite 
his post being unanswered as yet, it looks more like some config issue, 
perhaps, than any sort of generic hardware failure .. I may be wrong, 
but I didn't detect any recent avalanche of failures of that nature.

It's also evident from long-term reading of questions@ that many people, 
perhaps yes with older hardware, really don't like the idea of building 
very large projects - X, KDE and Gnome particularly - from source, and 
for whom the ability to use (the right set of) packages is important, so 
it's excellent timing that the new_xorg repo is in place, onya guys.

On wording .. well I've often enough demonstrated difficulties in being 
concise, to say the least - that's more your gig, Warren - but I'll make 
an attempt at what I'd like to see, and suspect quite a few of those who 
follow point releases rather than stable, don't generally read this or 
other devel lists, but who WILL read Release Notes when installing or 
upgrading - or get severely spanked in questions@ - would like or expect 
to know about to avoid potentially calamitous situations if unwarned:

=======

IMPORTANT NOTE for users of X and graphics ports and/or packages:

FreeBSD 9.3, unlike earlier 9.x releases, ships with the new Xorg server 
1.12 enabled in ports.  Building or updating any ports that depend on X 
will use the new Xorg unless you add WITHOUT_NEW_XORG= to /etc/make.conf 
- which may be advisable for users of approximately pre-2009 hardware, 
at least until you can be sure your hardware will work with Xorg 1.12

If using new Xorg, some [if not all?] hardware will require you to build 
the included VT kernel config to replace GENERIC, before you will be 
able to switch back and forth to regular virtual consoles from X.

On the other hand, installing from packages - including packages on the 
installation DVD and the main freebsd.org repository - still uses the 
older Xorg 1.7 package set, and will at least until [insert date].  If 
you have WITHOUT_NEW_XORG= in make.conf your ports and installed 
packages will already be matched during installation.

If you are happy using the new Xorg but wish to also install some or all 
X software using pkg(8), you need to enable access to the new repository 
especially for New Xorg packages during this transition period:

[-- lifted from [0] above .. quoting most of it, I can't condense it --]

To use it, you need to declare this new repository. Here's how to do it:

mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
cat > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD_new_xorg.conf <<EOF
# /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD_new_xorg.conf
# It is still required to have /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf installed and enabled.
# If that file is missing or if /usr/share/keys/pkg is missing see:
# http://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-EN-14:03.pkg.asc

FreeBSD_new_xorg: {
   url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/new_xorg",
   mirror_type: "srv",
   signature_type: "fingerprints",
   fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkg",
   enabled: yes
}
EOF

[from before the above in that post] Note that you must keep the primary 
repository enabled while using the new one.

These new repositories will remain available until 9.1-RELEASE, 
9.2-RELEASE and 10.0-RELEASE are past there end-of-life dates [1]. Note 
that pkg(8) should gain repository EOL support meanwhile, so you'll be 
notified in that case.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup

[-- end lifted --]

I've likely forgotten some important caveats or corner cases, but I hope 
that covers the situation for (remember!) naive 9.3-RELEASE installers.

cheers, Ian