Forcing Macports libs for X11 (Was Re: Error installing xpdf with openmotif)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 28, 2008, at 02:58, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:

> This thread really should be on -dev, so I'm moving it here...
>
>>> If Xft2 in ${x11prefix} gets confused by using freetype in $ 
>>> {prefix} then we should be using Xft2 in ${prefix}, which I would  
>>> think we should be doing anyway because it's newer too.
>>
>> Well then where do you draw the line?  Should we start forcing  
>> libX11 in macports because it's newer?  I'd be all for forcing  
>> Macports X11 libs over system X11 libs, since it would throw all  
>> of these issues (.la-fu, dependencies pulling in conflicting  
>> libX11s (#17558), header-mixup-fu, ...) out the window!
>
> I'm sorry if this starts a major flame war, but this needs to be  
> brought up. Mixing system and macports libs for X11 causes too many  
> problems.


By all means! We should figure this situation out. I came to MacPorts  
after this decision was already in place. But it seemed like a good  
decision to me because Apple's X11.app worked well on Tiger and the  
alternative provided by the XFree86 port had some oddities. I never  
tried the xorg variety. In any case you could only choose to have one  
of the three because they all installed to ${x11prefix}.

I think you're now changing it so xorg installs in ${prefix}, so it  
xorg could coexist with Apple X11?

Will using xorg mean I would open an xorg-provided X11 app instead of  
Apple's X11.app, and if so, would it work the same as Apple's?

> Here are the two that stand out in my head most:
>
> http://trac.macports.org/ticket/17558
> http://trac.macports.org/ticket/17631
>
> Additionally, ignoring the system libs would allow us to get past  
> the "bad .la files" bugs in X11SDK:
> http://trac.macports.org/ticket/17356 etc
>
> Changing the X11 policy to use port:* dependencies for X11 libs  
> will allow us to control these variables and eliminate a major  
> headache.
>
> Furthermore, I suggest we create a +system_x11 variant to all of  
> the X11 lib packages which would cause them to just be stubs, so  
> people could continue to use their system X11 by enabling that  
> variant...