Re: XFree86 modularization

On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 12:35:44PM -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:

>I don't really understand how having the the dependencies in the XFree86
>tree ensures that their license are X compatible; it seems to me
>that needs to be decided when you decide to depend on the library :-)

Exactly, and they can't go into the XFree86 tree unless their
license is compatible.  So, a very practical test is "can this
dependency be included in the XFree86 source tree?"  We're using
a method that has proven effective in practice, and in the end that
counts for more than speculation about unproven methods.

>And I'm not sure that the current set of XFree86 dependencies should
>cause much worry about portability ... freetype/zlib/expat are all
>used far beyond the portability bounds of XFree86.
>
>I certainly understand the worry about external dependencies causing
>difficulties for people building the system... it's a legitimate
>issue, and we have a worse problem with it for GTK+ which has
>roughly twice as many "external dependencies" as XFree86.

And XFree86 has a method for dealing with this problem.  That method
is flexible enough to allow the external dependencies to be externally
supplied, so it's a win-win situation.

>But I would argue that if you incorporate a copy of an external
>library, you have the obligation *not* to install it in a way
>that can affect the system.

That's a build-time configuration issue, and in every case XFree86
can be configured to meet that "obligation".  If you find a case where
that isn't true, it's a bug that should be logged and fixed.

David
-- 
David Dawes
Founder/committer/developer                     The XFree86 Project
www.XFree86.org/~dawes