Request for volunteers to help track down packages that use /usr/X11R6
dragoran
dragoran at feuerpokemon.de
Wed Aug 31 07:08:54 UTC 2005
Mike A. Harris wrote:
> Overview:
> ~~~~~~~~
> The X.Org Foundation has finally changed X11 to install itself
> into the /usr heirarchy by default instead of the /usr/X11R6
> hierarchy. The basic rationale is that with modern packaging
> systems like rpm, deb, etc., there is no need to isolate the
> X Window System into its own private hierarchy on the filesystem.
>
> Originally, the /usr/X11R6 directory was intended to strictly
> be the location where X11R6 itself would get installed. Over
> time however various other 3rd party software packages, addons
> and other stuff has infiltrated into the /usr/X11R6 heirarchy
> for no really good reason, and some of it still sits in there
> today.
>
> A year or two ago, I knew this change would be coming in the
> future, and sent out email to inform other package maintainers
> that they should update their packages to install their files
> in FHS compliant directories instead of abusing the /usr/X11R6
> heirarchy. I'm not sure how many people actually listened
> though, so we're about to find out. ;o)
>
>
> What's changing specifically:
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> X.Org X11 will no longer use the /usr/X11R6 directory hierarchy
> at all. It uses /usr, and installs files where you'd expect
> them to be found within that heirarchy more or less (although
> it is a bit buggy in this regard currently, that'll be fixed
> prior to X11R7's final release). The libraries, binaries,
> fonts, config files, data files - everything is moving.
>
> Along with this upstream X.Org change, there will be a number
> of backward compatibility issues that we'll face, where we
> may need to provide backward compatible symlinks for cases like
> applications hard coding the path to X binaries instead of
> using "which <appname>" and similar. We'll be keeping an
> eye on such issues and considering where we should provide
> compatibility links.
>
>
> What we'd like volunteers to help with:
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 1) A lot of existing Fedora Core, Fedora Extras and other 3rd
> party packages currently install themselves into /usr/X11R6,
> need to be updated to install themselves in a more
> appropriate location under /usr, using %{_datadir} and
> friends in their rpm specfiles. Volunteers are needed who
> are willing to take on the task of reporting bugs against
> the offending packages, and preferably also attaching
> patches to fix the rpms.
>
> 2) A number of packages might have shell scripts, .desktop
> files, or other things with hard coded paths to binaries
> such as /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm, or to data files, or other
> files traditionally installed under /usr/X11R6. Please
> report bugs against these packages, and where possible,
> change them to use "which <appname>" instead of hard
> coding the path to the executable/file directly. In some
> cases dynamic solution might not work, so hard code the
> new path in that case unless there's another appropriate
> solution apparent.
>
> 3) If you can personally think of any application or compat
> problems that might occur when the changeover is made,
> please report them to me via email in advance, so we can
> try to find a solution sooner than later.
>
>
> This message is being sent out to encourage community
> involvement in the process, and to help weed out problems
> sooner in the development cycle than later on, as there
> is likely to be a fair amount of package churn, so we'd
> like to get things in order far far in advance of
> FC5test1.
>
> Thanks in advance for any feedback, and also to any
> volunteers who decide to help out.
>
some apps have hardcoded -L/usr/X11R6/lib in there makefiles (which
allready make problems on multilib systems)
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