Better packaging for older hardware?

Mike A. Harris mharris at redhat.com
Sat Oct 18 10:00:35 UTC 2003


On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, Alan Cox wrote:

>> As some of you may already know, the RULE project (see my signature)
>> works to make the latest stable release of Red Hat useable on very
>> low end hardware (i386+ 16 MB+ RAM, 3/400 MB hard disks).
>
>Some of us know yes. Its what I used to install RH9 on a 486 with 24Mb of
>RAM 8)
>
>> I refer to building:
>> 1) kdrive RPMs whenever the XFree86 ones are updated.
>
>As I understand it keiths current kdrive XFree is very much split from
>the base XFree project now because XFree86 threw him out.

Just so other people who read that and start possibly incorrect
rumours however, Keith wrote kdrive himself (the k in kdrive ==
keith's driver).  He maintained kdrive in XFree86.org's CVS
repository officially because he had CVS write permission at the
time and it seemed logical.  However since he's been removed from
the XFree86 core team for just under a year now, and doesn't have
CVS write permission anymore he is unable to maintain his kdrive
X server(s) inside XFree86.org's CVS repository any longer.  In 
order to continue maintaining kdrive, he had to open up a new CVS 
repository in order to continue to do development on the project.

It isn't clear wether XFree86.org will update kdrive in their 
tree in the future or not, or if they'll strip it from the source 
code tree.  It doesn't much matter IMHO either way, as Keith's 
repository will always be the official repository for kdrive.  
;o)

Keith has also of course been the official upstream maintainer of 
Xrender, Xft, Xcursor, fontconfig, Xrandr, and other stuff, and 
since he no longer has CVS repository access to further develop 
those, they are also now maintained outside of XFree86 
officially.  All of these things are now hosted on 
freedesktop.org and hopefully XFree86.org will track them and 
update their sources.

It's of no real consequence if XFree86.org doesn't follow the 
externally maintained libraries, etc. however as all major OS 
distributions will be shifting to splitting out these libraries 
anyway for easier maintenance and updating. Similar to 
freetype/fontconfig/expat and other stuff being included with 
XFree86 sources, but we don't use the included version, instead 
we use the official upstream versions of all those.  Debian, 
FreeBSD, Mandrake and others most likely will track the official 
upstream versions of Keith's various projects also.

HTH


-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat





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