[45] in DCNS Development
Re: Filesystem Reorganization for release 7.3
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marc Horowitz)
Wed Jul 3 01:17:51 1991
To: Mark Rosenstein <mar@MIT.EDU>
Cc: developers@MIT.EDU, release-73@MIT.EDU, acmg@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: [43] in DCNS Development
Reply-To: Marc Horowitz <marc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 91 01:16:29 EDT
From: Marc Horowitz <marc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
>> 3.5 X Integration
>>
>> Where to put X is a difficult choice. One argument says that there is
>> already a standard location for X binaries: /usr/bin/X11. But if the
>> vendor puts their own version of X there, we have a conflict. And
>> some third party software may depend on the vendor's version of X
>> clients. So we put our X in a different place. Some vendors already
>> put their X somewhere other than /usr/bin/X11, so this is not a major
>> departure from standard practice. To avoid having any directories
>> with too many files in them, we do not put them in /usr/athena/bin or
>> /usr/athena/third/bin, but in its own place: /usr/athena/X11/bin.
I think moving X is a singularly bad idea. Too much stuff (user
dotfiles, scripts, net software, user hacks, courseware, course
documentation, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting about right
now) relies on these paths working for me to think moving it can do
anything but confuse things.
Yes, most things are configurable, and Imake will help a lot. And you
plan on making things backward compatible. But it is still my opinion
that X shouldn't go anywhere. VOSAP is a laudable goal; but there are
certain things in vendor implementations that could stand to be
corrected; Ultrix man w/o MANPATH support is one such example. Any
vendor which doesn't have full X11R4 support is another. And we will
want to support R5 long before we can expect vendors to do so.
So, I'm curious:
1) What platforms have a version of X11 not in /usr/*/X11?
2) On these platforms, is X11 always installed as part of the base
vendor-supplied OS, or an optional extra?
3) What third party software which we have or plan on acquiring
depends on vendor X11 implementations, and won't work if the R4 stuff
is in its place?
4) Who's going to tell the 1.00 course staff about this? (1/2 :-)
