X11 in Macports

[Jeremy Huddleston]

On Nov 22, 2008, at 21:26, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On Nov 22, 2008, at 23:00, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
>> For those of you who don't know me, I took over development of X11  
>> in OSX when Ben Byer moved on to bigger and better things at the  
>> beginning of 2009.
>
> Shhhh! I thought people weren't supposed to know you have a time  
> machine. :)

Psht... 2008... =p

>> 2) The other dependency issue
>>
>> Now, for what port to actually depend on... Quickly grepping though  
>> the code, I have seen the following dependencies for libX11:
>>
>> lib:libX11.6:XFree86
>> lib:libX11.6:xorg
>> lib:libX11:XFree86
>> lib:libX11:xorg
>> lib:libX11:xorg-libX11
>>
>> I'd like to standardize this to be xorg-libX11
>
> We did have consensus and standardization: everything that needed  
> X11 declared a dependency on "lib:libX11.6:XFree86". Then some  
> people started changing some ports to "lib:libX11.6:xorg" for an  
> unknown reason.
>
> As I understand it, the reason we have a policy exception to allow  
> Apple X11 to be used instead of XFree86 or xorg in MacPorts is that  
> Apple X11 integrates nicely with Mac OS X. I've never used xorg in  
> MacPorts, but I tried installing XFree86 some time ago and when it  
> launched, it had a weird cursor, weird window behavior, it launched  
> 5 weird-shaped and weird-colored terminal windows I couldn't figure  
> out how to deal with, and it was just a very off-putting experience.  
> I figured I didn't know what I was doing, uninstalled it, and  
> returned to Apple X11 which always worked great.
>
> My initial impression is that we shouldn't have a policy exception  
> for everything Leopard's X11 provides, however. fontconfig, xrender,  
> etc. are surely newer in MacPorts than they are in Tiger, and we  
> still support Tiger, and some people even still use MacPorts on  
> Panther. If there are things in Leopard's X11 that are newer than  
> what we have in MacPorts, then let's update what we have in  
> MacPorts. If a MacPorts port configuration (you say fontconfig?)  
> doesn't integrate well with the OS, then let's fix that port.

Right, I agree that we should update what we have in Macports...  
that's not at issue here... what's at issue is that libX11 can be  
provided by 3 different packages in Macporgs (xorg, XFree86, and xorg- 
libX11)... and I'd like to change that to just what is actually  
maintained and updated (xorg-libX11)...

As for supporting Tiger (and not intentionally trying to break  
Panther), but think that we should still use the lib:... dependency so  
that it "works better" on Leopard and SnowLeopard... also, users can  
opt to use the macports libs by pulling them in instead of the Tiger  
ones...

Perhaps the port:* dep should be used on Tiger and the lib:* dep on  
Leopard?  I don't really like that option, but I'd be willing to  
compromise on it if that would be satisfactory.

>> 3) The old monolith xorg and XFree86
>>
>> I'd like to eventually punt these in favor of having just one X11  
>> solution in Macports based on the latest release.
>
> I have no problem with changing the recommended non-Apple X11 from  
> XFree8 to xorg for example.

Well, the xorg port itself is actually the old monolithic 6.8.2  
release.  The xorg-server port is actually the latest release...

Perhaps we could update the xorg port to be a meta for xorg-server,  
xorg-libX11, etc...

> (I understand that Apple's X11 switched from being based on XFree86  
> to being based on xorg, and that would be a fine reason to also  
> prefer xorg as the fallback in MacPorts.) If that's decided, then it  
> should be done in all ports at once. Otherwise people are left  
> wondering why some ports depend on one X implementation and others  
> on another.

Agreed...

> As long as both projects continue to exist and function on current  
> OSes, there's no reason to delete one or the other, however, is  
> there? Choice is a good thing, and we certainly have other cases of  
> duplicate functionality in ports.

Does the XFree86 port actually function?  It didn't even build last I  
tried (granted it was over a year ago, but there doesn't seem to have  
been much movement on the port)... and the xorg port is using a  
codebase from 3 years ago and hasn't been touched since 2007-08-10...