RFC: X library package changes, dependancy changes, freedesktop.org xlibs, etc.

[Toshio]

On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 00:09, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> 1) Allow multiple X11 implemenations to be available in rpm 
>    packaging, and be substituted with each other easily.
> 
If you are going to package freedesktop-X11 as separate packages for
each library, then the XFree86 libraries also should be split into
separate binary packages so people can actually play with alternative
implementations of a subset of the X libraries.  (May have been implied,
but it wasn't actually mentioned as being part of the plan.)

> 2) Allow X11 software to compile, link, build and produce 
>    packages irrespective of which implemenation is present.  This 
>    is important, because X11 is a standard, and so any compliant 
>    implementation should be substitutable, at least for the bits 
>    that are actually official standards.
> 
Are we going to be troubleshooting this or upstream?  Or is it "upstream
cares about this and when we find it doesn't work as expected we'll
point it out to them"?

> 3) Allow X11 software binary rpm packages which were compiled 
>    with any X11 implementation, to install cleanly on a system 
>    which has any X11 implementation installed.  Of course, in 
>    this particular case, only "official standard" parts of the 
>    given X11 implementation should be interchangeable 100%, 
>    however implementation specific features may require 
>    additional dependancies.
> 
So we'll have to break apart X11 providing packages into standard's
providing pieces and extras providing pieces wherever possible.

Regarding the new Requires: Is it really necessary to Require:
XFree86-libs right now?  Shouldn't rpm's automatic dependencies drag in
libX11.so which is found in XFree86-libs.  Couldn't we get rid of
dependency on XFree86-libs and not replace it?

Separate problem: we have to identify packages which can simply depend
on finding any /usr/lib/{X11/}libX11.so in the filesystem and those
which need a specific implementation of libX11.  So I think we need the
capability to Provide/Require: XFree86-libX11 and freedesktop-libX11. 
This will be something of a headache as we really need finer grained
tracking than rpm provides.

Maybe we'll need extra web infrastructure that tells us XFree86-libX11
provides (standards, X11_nonstandard_gizmo) while freedesktop-libX11
provides (standards, X11_nonstandard_whizzo) and developers can check if
those things are ever reconciled/build separate packages for the
different xlibs, etc (ugh).

Hopefully most API/ABI enhancements will be done in true add-ons rather
than entangled with standard pieces like this....

-Toshio
-- 
Toshio <toshio at tiki-lounge.com>