On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 09:08:02PM -0400, Thomas Pegg wrote:
> 
> On Apr 19, 2012, at 6:29 AM, Andrew Benton wrote:
> >> 
> > 
> > There is a major change I'd like to see but I don't have the energy to
> > do it. I don't like the Xorg chapter with its scripted downloading and
> > compiling. It seems to me to be at odds with the rest of BLFS. I'd like
> > to see every Xorg package with its own page complete with dependencies
> > (they aren't all required). But it'd be such a big job I don't think
> > it'll ever happen.
> 
> Trust me when I say this, you do not want that, it is a big mess. When 
> modular X first came out I had made a modified version of the book (albeit 
> incomplete),  much like what your proposing. Hmm, would love to hunt the 
> archive and find that cause I know I posted a link to it.

 I was going to support Andy's post, but I held back after Thomas
posted, to give it some more thought.  For me, there are two
problems with the current xorg build:

1. It's scripted.  Scripting is good, and nobody who repeatedly
builds BLFS (or LFS) can do without it.  But we shouldn't be
spoon-feeding our users!  Every builder should be encouraged to
create their own scripts, to suit what they are doing.  In my own
case, /sources is an nfs mount and I have my own functions to handle
common tasks and logging.  Plus, of course, my own failure modes.

2. The actual versions of the xorg packages used by any particular
version of the book are opaque, as is the build order.  You have to
download the wget files to see these.  For everything else, you can
just look at the version in the book.  ISTR that the order in which
the libraries are built has slightly changed over the years.

 Certainly, adding a page for each package will make the book a lot
bigger.  But I doubt it will make it a mess.  OK, perhaps the video
drivers are a bit messy (previous item could link to a page listing
the drivers, each driver could link to what comes after instead of
the "next" video driver).  Also, just because everything was in the
last non-modular xorg doesn't mean we still need to build it!  e.g.
who really uses the old fonts ? [ /me stands back, ready to warm his
hands in the flames :) ]

ĸen
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