[Xquartz-dev] Re: deprecating xmkmf / imake

[Martin Costabel]

Ben Byer wrote:
> 
> On Apr 8, 2008, at 7:22 AM, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
> 
>>> It's not Apple's job to correct infrastructure issues within the 
>>> parent product.  If such
>>> improvements fall naturally out of the work and you canhave them made
>>> upstream, great, but the whole reason X11 on OS X exists at all is
>>> compatibility.  Making it extra-incompatible, no matter how valid the
>>> motivation, seems the wrong way to go.
>>
>> I agree with you 100% here.
> 
> As do I  -- I'm not quite sure if this is a response to my comment, but 
> if so, I failed to correctly convey my opinion.
> 
> What I was trying to say was:
> 
> If we keep xmkmf/imake, it will cost us <n> engineer-hours to keep xmkmf 
> on life support over the next year or two.
> 
> It would take <m> engineer-hours to retool all of the macports / fink / 
> ? projects that currently use xmkmf to use something else (including, 
> for example, a static Makefile).
> 
> We should compare <n> to <m> and consider fixing the projects, depending 
> on how lopsided that comparison may be.

If you really do this comparison, in my opinion the result is very clear:

Keeping xmkmf in xquartz "on life support" is completely trivial 
compared to what it would take to convert just one of the projects, 
let's say xfig, from xmkmf/imake to a static makefile. Notice that there 
is not just the Imakefile, there are also utils like mkdirhier that are 
used by the xfig build process.

What would you have to do for that "life support"? Currently, the utils 
including xmkmf/imake are contained in released X11R7.?. While they are 
not used for *building* xorg, they are in the source release, and the 
binary executables are built if one follows the published rules for 
building xorg X11.

The only thing that has to be done specifically for the Mac is to define 
some lines in a config file or two, but this has to be done only once 
(not even once, it can be left where it is currently in Leopard's X11.) 
And it is much easier to do this if everything, including imake, is 
inside /usr/X11, than if it has to be done by Fink or Macports where 
imake and the config files are in /opt/local/ or /sw/ and the rest of 
the X11 distribution is in /usr/X11.

Now, of course, if you count 1 engineer-hour of an Apple engineer as the 
equivalent of 100 volunteer-hours of Fink or xfig developers, you may 
see this differently...

-- 
Martin