On Tue, 20 May 2003, Rex Dieter wrote: >> >as well as lots of subtle incompatibilies between XF 4.2 and 4.3 >> >that would/should require rebuilding other packages for the new >> >XFree86. >> >> This one though, is absolutely false. ;o) > >OK, maybe saying that there were *lots* of subtle incompatibilities was a >bit strong. There are at least a few that I've seen. Such as? >> You should not have to recompile a single line of code to use the >> new XFree86. > >That may well be in practice, but I've seen several applications >require rebuilding, though the only details I recall off-hand >were those apps using the X-Video extenstion, namely mplayer and >xine. Those applications only require being rebuilt because the person you downloaded them from who originally compiled them, had a broken X installation, that installed shared versions of libraries that XFree86 specifically and explicitly does not ship as shared libraries. That is *NOT* an XFree86 problem or bug, or incompatibility. It is the result of people forcefully configuring XFree86 at build time, to produce shared libraries that XFree86.org explicitly and purposefully does not distribute as shared, because the ABIs are not frozen. Those people who build X with extra shared libraries cause 2 problems: 1) When the ABI *does* break, and it probably will, all of their applications which link to the libs that are supposed to be static-only will need to be recompiled. 2) When they compile applications that end up linking to the non-standard shared libraries, if someone (you) tries to run them on a system which ships the proper standard X library set, the applications will fail because of missing libraries that they shouldn't have been linked to incorrectly in the first place. I would sure love to hear of any true incompatibilties between XFree86 releases, where the XFree86 that is installed on the system was both built and installed by competant people though. Maybe someone can clue in the mplayer/xine folk to compile their applications on a stable system that follows standards. -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
