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List:       xfree86-forum
Subject:    Re: [forum] XFree86 modularization
From:       Owen Taylor <otaylor () redhat ! com>
Date:       2003-05-09 16:14:29
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On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 00:25, Torrey T. Lyons wrote:
> At 11:47 PM -0400 5/8/03, Owen Taylor wrote:
> >Hi Egbert,
> >
> >Here's a quick (if late) writeup of my thoughts on X modularization;
> >I'm not sure it really addresses your questions, since the
> >driver interfaces are the part of X that I'm least familiar
> >with, but perhaps it is useful anyways.
> >
> >  * One thing I personally would to like to see split apart, or in
> >    fact, killed from XFree86 is copies of libraries that are
> >    independently maintained ... FreeType, zlib, expat, and now
> >    fontconfig. People whine about external dependencies, but in
> >    the end sucked in copies of the libraries do more harm both
> >    maintenance headaches and in multiple conflicting installs.
> 
> Here's a counter example: In recent history this would have caused 
> great difficulties on Darwin/Mac OS X with Freetype. Freetype is 
> largely only installed on Mac OS X as part of XFree86. Although 
> Freetype supports Mac OS X, the Freetype team has no committers with 
> a Mac OS X box. Until a few days ago you could not even build 
> standard Freetype on Mac OS X using gcc but had to use a proprietary 
> compiler. I do not mean to pick on the Freetype team--they do a great 
> job. Freetype has just had a different emphasis with regards to which 
> platforms they support. However, whenever XFree86 depends on an 
> external library that may not have the same level of support for all 
> the platforms XFree86 supports, you need to have XFree86 maintain a 
> local copy of the library.

Personally, I see every patch that goes into the XFree86 version
of FreeType that isn't upstream as an argument in the *other*
direction.
 
 A) You might have different copies of FreeType with the same
    version number but different bug fixes.
 B) There is potential for bug fixes (and portability enhancements)
    not getting upstream.

And especially as far as FreeType goes, portability doesn't convince
me much. The FreeType team is extraordinarily willing to take
portability patches for all sorts of platforms that I wouldn't
even *think* of supporting for GTK+. (E.g., platforms with 16 bit
integers.)

If the XFree86 version builds on OS X and the upstream vrsion
doens't, that is a clear sign to me that someone neglected to
send the patches upstream. And that wouldn't have happened
if there wasn't a copy of FreeType in XFree86.

Regards,
                                          Owen



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