[Cooker] Modular X.org

[Gustavo Pichorim Boiko]

Hi

After some time working, I have the first set of X.org packages. The
effort was to make the packages as compilable as possible. Each package was
made from scratch, by creating an as-simple-as-possible spec file and then
changing the required components on each package. To make sure the packages
compile, they were rebuilt in a clean environment with just a few packages
installed. But by changing some configure options it might be necessary to
add some more buildrequires. The build dependencies between the xorg packages
were identified and added to the spec file.

The layout of the packages tries to reproduce the upstream modules as well
as possible. Despite of the big number of packages, by doing this we make it
easier for doing updates (as each module can have individual releases and
in fact those releases are being made). Some meta-packages were created to
provide an easier way to install/upgrade the packages. Some metapackages are
still missing (and some may be necessary later).
This split is also useful when building images for embedded systems in which
just the necessary packages should be installed.

The GLX support now requires an external Mesa package with DRI support. I
have created an updated Mesa package (based on the one available on cooker),
adapting it to the new X package layout, and adding the necessary support
in order to get GLX working. The Mesa's buildsystem has changed from the
5.0.2 to 6.4.2 so I had to adapt the spec file to its new buildsystem. Some
of the compilation options and flags needs to be verified for different
architetures. The GLX support needs more testing though.

We have tried a build on x86_64 and the build went ok, but I would like
someone with more experience on multiarch to take a look and check if it is
ok. We are also creating graphs of the packages' dependencies in order to
check if there is nothing wrong going on.

There is an initial support for upgrading from xorg 6.9 to 7.0, but as the
packages are of a very different layout, there are probably more cases of
dependencies not being handled by them. Probably in the first tries some
packages will need to be installed by hand.

The BuildRequires of the packages should be ok for rebuilding. The list
at http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/pub/Main/ModularX/xorg_buildorder.txt shows
the order in which packages should be built. As the packages get mature, I
will put them on cooker and they will be in the svn repository.

This initial effort for making good-shaped packages is important (from my
point of view) to implement the EGL plan in which cvs snapshots of the xorg
modules will be required, and the upgrading should be as smooth as possible.

The patches that were applied in the xorg 6.9 packages are not yet
ported/applied in the new packages. As the buildsystem of xorg has changed
(from imake to autotools), some of them need to be ported. Also, some of
the paches touch more than one module of the xorg, and so the patch should
be splitted. I will be appling the patches as I finish adjusting them.

Finally, working on xorg packages is a lot of work, so anyone willing to
help is more than welcome. I'd like to thank Colin Guthrie, Anssi Hannula
and Christiaan Welvaart for the effort put in the wiki page (which I will
be updating soon), and also a special thank to Christiaan Welvaart for his
comments and suggestions on the xorg packaging.


The packages are available at:
http://distro2.conectiva.com.br/~boiko/xorg7/noarch
http://distro2.conectiva.com.br/~boiko/xorg7/i586

And the SRPMS are available at:
http://distro2.conectiva.com.br/~boiko/xorg7/SRPMS


If you are using smart, just setting the priority of the xorg repositories
to a high value will help a lot when updating.  Urpmi should ask you
to choose between the xorg 6.9 and packages of 7.0. More tests on this are
still required (I will try to create some simulations of possible situations
to make it possible to do the update smoothly).  Install de x11-server-xorg
package and run the auto-select from urpmi. The Xorg server is in the
x11-server-xorg package. It might be necessary (for now) to ask smart/urpmi
to install the server package. As I said, the idea is to have the update
smooth for 2007.

Bug reports, patches, suggestions, etc are all welcome. I won't use the
bugzilla for now (at least while the packages are not in cooker) so please
send me mail for that.

Cheers
-- 
Gustavo Pichorim Boiko
----------------------
boiko @ mandriva . com
Mandriva - http://www.mandriva.com