[Xquartz-dev] Re: deprecating xmkmf / imake

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On Apr 9, 2008, at 2:39 PM, Martin Costabel wrote:

> I am not talking about building X11, and I am not talking about  
> *new* software projects. I am talking about existing software like  
> xaw3d/transfig/xfig.

I think everyone has been clear on that, Jeremy was just pointing out  
that it's well documented (and has been for awhile) just what new  
applications should be doing.

I also suspect that if xfig is as popular as you say it is, someone  
will step up and autoconf it since the process of doing that is pretty  
well understood by now. I also did not realize that xmkmf is currently  
broken on MacOSX (due to the configuration file issues Jeremy  
mentioned) so it's not the simple matter of providing a "legacy  
package" now, you're basically asking Jeremy to support it and it's  
clear that he does not want to do that, so why keep arguing the  
point?  X.org has declared its intentions very clearly by autoconf'ing  
the hell out of everything and it's clearly time for the rest of the  
X11 world to follow suit - end of story!

To anticipate the question as to why we switched away from XFree86 and  
brought about all this change, let me just point to the events of  
February 2004  and the wikipedia entry for XFree86.  It's not like  
this hasn't been a long time coming, folks!

- Jordan

P.S. Just for the record, I personally hate autoconf and here I am  
arguing for it.  That should say something about the degree to which  
xmkmf is deprecated.