Re: Xorg version number change

Daniel Stone wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 04:52:22PM -0700, Keith Packard wrote:
> > > > What 'the world' means is debatable, especially as many
> > > > systems have a lot of paths with 'X11R6' encoded in them.
> > >
> > > Just because it's there and common practice, doesn't make it right. :)
> >
> > Yep. Long ago it was X11R5, before that X11R4. And switching the default
> > dir to /usr/X11R7/ won't hurt neither less or more
> > (backwards-compatibility can be guranteed via softlink from /usr/X11R6
> > --> /usr/X11R7/ ...) ... :)
> 
> So we soft-link all the directories to each other.  That's so cool.
> Very compelling argument for having them.

The link /usr/X11/ should link to the current version being in use. That
allows an admin to have more than one tree and switch betweenm active
version just via changing the soft link.

> > BTW: Since a while Solaris has a link /usr/X/ which points to the
> > currently installed version of X11... maybe the same should be done for
> > the Xorg tree and then all version-independent paths should go through
> > /usr/X/ (or /usr/X11/) instead of /usr/X11R(6|7)/ ...
> 
> Oh man, no.  Why?

Ask the original designers of the code... :)

> For starters, I don't think this tree should even exist.  But if we take
> it for granted that it must exist for some strange reason, why must we
> include the version number in it?
> 
> GTK isn't installed to /usr/gtk+-2.4.
> GNOME isn't installed to /usr/gnome2.8.

... and GTK and Gnome are also known for other "good" design choices...
=:-)
Really... both _should_ live in /usr/gnome/ like all good Unix citizen.

> KDE isn't installed to /usr/kde3.3.

Happily lives under /opt/kde/ in SuSE and most other Linux versions (or
/usr/kde/ on Solaris) ...

> xterm isn't installed to /usr/xterm-0.94.

BAD example as "xterm" is part of the X11 suite.

> Apache isn't installed to /usr/apache-1.3.29.

It's /usr/apache/ here (Solaris) ...

> To take the example of a proprietary UNIX suite par excellence; last
> time I checked, iPlanet installed to /usr/netscape, not
> /usr/netscape-iplanet-x.x.x.  So, even in the most abhorrent case of
> there being a separate subdirectory under /usr (why? why? why?), there
> is no way known the version number should be playing a part.
> 
> I don't think the separate directory under /usr should exist per
> default,

So you want to stick everything into /usr/include/, /usr/lib/ etc.?
Windows has such a "flat" filesystem layout where every application
behaves like that. And from Windows also comes the term "DLL h*ll".
Think about it...

> but if it does, there is absolutely no reason to include the
> version number.  I think it's just dumb.  Really, really dumb.

It's not always dumb, sometimes it makes much sense (see the comment
with the multiple versions above...).

----

Bye,
Roland

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