Request for volunteers to help track down packages that use /usr/X11R6

[Mike A. Harris]

Peter Lemenkov wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 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.
> 
> 
> # ln -s /usr /usr/X11R6
> 
> and forget about this problem...

There are 2 reasons why that solution isn't suitable:

1) rpm is unable to replace a directory (/usr/X11R6 for example)
    with a symlink when upgrading.

2) Numerous other pieces of software install themselves into
    /usr/X11R6 even though they have no right to do so, and are
    not part of "X11".  Even if you remove the xorg-x11 rpm
    packages from your system completely, there are still tonnes
    of files in /usr/X11R6 that do not belong to the X Window
    System.  Some of these files are owned by other rpm packages,
    and some of them might not be owned by any package, such
    as files that are generated at runtime (fonts.dir for
    example from packages that do not properly use %ghost), or
    might be present from software installed from tarball sources.


Therefore, it isn't possible to remove the directory anyway, and
trying to "move" the directory would break the rpm packages that
are installed which contain files in there.

Having said that however, it certainly would be nice to be able
to symlink /usr/X11R6 to /usr if there weren't new technical
problems created in the process by doing so.

Thanks for the suggestion however.