The X.Org community is proud to announce the release of X11R7.2, the third modular release of the X Window System. It incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including
improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-09-10
has anyone come up with a decent script that does at least some of this for you?
Yes, there are a lots of scripts that automate this process - I guess each linux distro that follows the release process incrementally has one 
As you do packaging work, I guess you have to come up with an infrastructure that automates the process. Again, there might be several of those, I only know FreeBSD's, which works like you'd expect it: one command to install (and even package if you run make package-recursive) everything.
I don't know whom you expect to this for you - users expect this from their distribution maintainers. If you don't use a distribution (you are yourself the distributor and packager) - than I would say this was your responsibility. On the other hand, you could probably borrow from other's work. If you are a linux guy, I'd probably look at how the archlinux folks do their thing - but you will find probably an infrastructure there (similarly to FreeBSD) that is generic, as it handles automation of building packages for everything, not just xorg.
Member since:2005-07-20
Gentoo portage can do it for you too. You don't have to really run Gentoo in order to use Portage, just download the starter bits and use an alternate install root, and artificially insert the dependencies your current distro provides (like glibc).
Or you could install it into a chroot directory and keep a complete mini-Gentoo system inside there.
That'd turn Portage into a Xorg compiler script.
Member since:2005-08-28
Yes, we do have an internal system (src and dest dir are mounted in AFS volumes, which are distributed via a program called depot. smake (another internal tool) is used for the actual compiling/installing bits) I didn't write these, they go back quite a ways before my time.
"I don't know whom you expect to this for you - users expect this from their distribution maintainers."
I don't expect anyone to do the compiling for me, I'm just pointing out that going from a single (or 7 split) tarball, editing the host.def and running make, to having to individually compile close to 300 seperate components for a single collection is a _lot_ more work. It'd be nice if the x.org folks themselves provided something to assist in this regard. Having done this as much as I have, you get to know that there are some projects that write their stuff keeping distro packagers in mind, and others that don't. ("$DESTDIR? why, isn't everyone installing locally to a single machine?" sigh...) That said, I don't intend to be pointing fingers at the X.org folks, otherwise they seem to be putting out good stuff.
I wonder for instance if this is why Patrick V. is still using 6.9 for Slack.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier."Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-08-28
I haven't been following it closely of late, so, now with this release, and the umpteen tarballs to download, untar, configure with whatever proper options are necessary, make, make install (and all in whatever proper order) has anyone come up with a decent script that does at least some of this for you?
(yes, as someone who does software packaging at my work, going from the old edit one or two files, and running make World on the whole thing, to the new modular method with 287 separate components, doesn't seem to make my job easier...)