On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 11:10:20AM +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 03:19:57PM -0500, David Cantrell wrote:
> [...]
> > > So I guess this means no remoting into ppc64 or s390x machines from
> > > x86_64 or ppc64le machines without a configuration tweak?
> >
> > We don't have ppc64 builds anymore and I don't know the last release we had
> > that was ppc64, but it was a long time ago now.  All current POWER systems are
> > ppc64le.
> >
> > And everything else we have as primary or alternative architectures is little
> > endian, except s390x.  I do view this as a risk for s390x because of all the
> > architectures we build for, this one is the most difficult to use graphically.
> > Exporting your display is still the convenient method for this platform.
> >
> > Given that this change proposal affects default behavior, I don't see a
> > problem with it.  s390x users can drop the configuration change in xorg.conf.d
> > to regain the functionality.  If that can be conditionally enabled for s390x
> > at package build time, that might make things easier (but wouldn't you need to
> > make the change on both the s390x host and your non-s390x workstation?).
>
> The X protocol works that the first byte of the connection request is a
> either 'l' or 'B', telling the server that the client is little or Big
> endian. The client has no information on the server's endianess.
>
> This means the configuration needs to be done wherever your X server
> runs, so the (little-endian) thing you're sitting in front of. Which is
> also why compile-time defaults are difficult, at compile time we cannot
> know that eventually you may want to connect from an s390x.

Reasonable.  The runtime configuration change I can make locally to allow me
to run X programs on an s390x and display them locally is sufficient for me.