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.
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