Subject: Re: X.org vs. XFree86 going forward
To: Allen Briggs <briggs@netbsd.org>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: tech-x11
Date: 09/27/2004 20:28:30
I have been watching this for over a year now. I helped port some XFree86
libraries to the GNU Built Tools framework for freedesktop Xlibs project
(and I have a freedesktop commit access). I created a XFree86 package for
my Linux systems for pkgsrc and I helped with the XFree86-* packages for
pkgsrc. And I created and use many xlibs packages (most in pkgsrc-wip).
The things I have noticed that make me consider Xorg:
- security and bug fixes that I found in Xorg CVS but not in XFree86 CVS.
- improvements for fontconfig, Xft and other code in Xorg but not in
XFree86.
- Some of our fixes in NetBSD's xsrc came from Xorg because XFree86 didn't
have yet.
Some of these are things that I directly don't care about -- but I am
glad there has been someone who work on these things in Xorg.
- various X11 developers work on Xorg for a variety of different
platforms and many are non-Linux users.
- just past couple days has been discussion on adding wsfb (dumb
framebuffer driver using wscons) driver for OpenBSD and NetBSD which is
being added.
I believe they would be open to allowing code that only NetBSD uses to be
added. I read that XFree86 only will accept OS independent code, but Xorg
will in some cases accept OS dependent code.
Where do we have a list of NetBSD specific code? Would I have to do a diff
against XFree86 and NetBSD's xsrc to find? Or is there an easier way?
- the Xorg community is friendly and appear to be open to suggestions.
- Xorg tries to have frequent, but not to frequent, releases.
- They have nice automated builds using Tinderbox (for example for Xorg
release, I had one of my NetBSD boxes setup to retrieve and test their
release builds daily for a few weeks and all results were posted
automatically to their tinderbox webpages).
- Another good thing is that they are working on having splitting up all
the "monolithic" code into smaller pieces and working on making it more
portable for building. The X libraries is basically done. If I understand
correctly, soon the monolithic X which is made of a few tar balls will be
replaced by many separately building projects.
The good and bad thing is that they are using the GNU Build tools
(autoconf, automake, libtool, etc.). I read that they plan to keep the
Imake bits in place, but I don't know how long they will be supported.
Jeremy C. Reed
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