[Xquartz-dev] XQuartz 2.7.10_rc1

[Jack Howarth]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 1:06 AM, Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia
<jeremyhu at apple.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'd like to announce that XQuartz 2.7.10_rc1 is available.  Full changes since 2.7.9 can be seen in the release notes:
>
>     https://www.xquartz.org/releases/XQuartz-2.7.10_rc1.html
>
> The main change since 2.7.10_beta2 is around the libXt compatibility hack for Motif.  Because of issues with applications that use both Motif and libXaw, I've abandoned the previous approach of shipping /opt/X11/lib/libXt.6.dylib as flat_namespace and /opt/X11/lib/libXt.7.dylib as the two-level namespace version.  Now, /opt/X11/lib/libXt.6.dylib is two-level namespace, and /opt/X11/lib/libXt.7.dylib is provided as a symlink to it for compatibility.  This means that Motif based applications will fail to launch by default unless this bug is fixed in Motif.
>
> As a workaround, we're shipping the flat namespace dylib hack at /opt/X11/lib/flat_namespace/libXt.6.dylib.  Users who require that version have two options:
>   1) Replace the two-level namespace version with it (sudo cp /opt/X11/lib/flat_namespace/libXt.6.dylib /opt/X11/lib/libXt.6.dylib)
>   2) Launch your Motif applications using DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/X11/lib/flat_namespace

That really isn't a viable solution since using DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH will
require users to disable rootless on 10.11 and later.

>
> This should not be seen as a long-term solution.  Hopefully someone will step up to fix Motif to not require this hack.

That is impossible to achieve. The underlying problem is a namespace
conflict for at least one symbol in motif. Any proper fix for this
would require motif to rename those symbols and break all legacy motif
binaries.

>
> Please give this a try and comment on the effectiveness of this approach if you use Motif-based applications.

Is the breakage in 2.7.9 *really* that bad? It seems better to revert
this change in 2.7.10 and leave things as they are in 2.7.9 relative
to the motif support. At least legacy binaries still work there and if
users rebuild rigorously against the two-level namespace
libXt.7.dylib, there shouldn't be issues with newly built binaries.

>
> Thanks,
> Jeremy
>
>
>
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