Re: [HEADS UP] cairo downgraded

[David Holland <dholland-pkgusers%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 05:19:07AM -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote:
 >>>> This is not because netbsd-5's native X doesn't have the SHM
 >>>> extension, which is one of the older X extensions around; it's because
 >>>> x11-links is broken.
 > 
 > Does OS X Lion also use NetBSD-style native X that requires x11-links?

It has native X you can get from Apple. It's up to you whether you use
it or pkgsrc X.

 > Is there any way to keep two versions of graphics/cairo, one for
 > native X and the other for modular Xorg?  Maybe there could be
 > instructions in the Makefile telling it to avoid the new version if
 > XORG_TYPE is native as opposed to modular?  Or is that too
 > complicated and error-prone?

It can be done, and it's been done in the past, but it's messy.

The right thing to do is...

 > Is x11-links repairable?

Yes. It's just not entirely trivial.

The problem is that for each X package it uses the minimum version
defined for compatibility purposes in pkgsrc X... as the minimum
version of the corresponding package in native X that it will allow to
be used. If native X is older, x11-links doesn't symlink (and thereby
hides) the native X version, and owing to historical lossage there's
no way to build the pkgsrc version as a replacement either. So every
time there's a revbump that affects X packages, more pieces of native
X disappear from your pkgsrc build environment.

Fixing the version handling should be possible; it just requires
mucking with a lot of fragile and densely connected pieces of pkgsrc
infrastructure. Fixing the "historical lossage" is a major
undertaking.

A while back I was blathering about a way to completely rework the way
builtin packages are handled (including native X packages, which no
longer need to be a special case these days) but I apparently never
wrote it down and I appear to have forgotten most of the details. (sigh.)

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost