Re: Status of xsrc/native X?

[Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 07:03:06 +0000
Thomas Mueller <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost> wrote:

> What is now the status of native vs. modular (pkgsrc) X in NetBSD-current?
> 
> I seemed to read something about native X being deprecated in favor of pkgsrc X, but keep seeing xsrc in nightly build logs, and recently noticed a big upgrade in native X in xsrc tree as well as supporting files in src tree.
> 
> Native X used to be a very old version of xorg-server.
> 
> I am already on modular X, should I switch to native, and how do I do it elegantly, or should I do a new installation?  I have space for lots of partitions using GPT on 3 TB or 4 TB hard drive.
> 
> Is the intention now to keep native X current?

I can't speak for the native X11 maintainers nor comment on what the
original plan was, but the way things de facto turned out is that
pkgsrc X11 provides the latest stable upstream versions for up-to-date
hardware- and operating system combinations (not limited to NetBSD!)
while native X11 provides something that works well for the associated
NetBSD release and hardware available at that time.

If you are already on pkgsrc X11 and your intent is to stay up-to-date
I don't see any reason to switch back.

My vision is that pkgsrc X11 should always work better than
native X11 on modern x86 and ARM. That said there are still plenty
of NetBSD specific patches in the xsrc tree (mostly for the tier2/tier3
platforms) that don't exist in pkgsrc nor upstream. I encourage
maintainers to always commit their fixes in both trees AND upstream
them.

Kind regards,
-Tobias