source: x/installing/xorg7.xml@ 8e37798

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<sect1 id="xorg7" xreflabel="Xorg-&xorg7-version;">
  <?dbhtml filename="xorg7.html"?>

  <sect1info>
    <othername>$LastChangedBy$</othername>
    <date>$Date$</date>
  </sect1info>

  <title>Introduction to Xorg-&xorg7-version;</title>

  <indexterm zone="xorg7">
    <primary sortas="a-xorg7">Xorg</primary>
  </indexterm>


  <para><application>Xorg</application> is a freely redistributable,
  open-source implementation of the <application>X</application> Window
  System. This system provides a client/server interface between display
  hardware (the mouse, keyboard, and video displays) and the desktop
  environment, while also providing both the windowing infrastructure and a
  standardized application interface (API).</para>

  <para condition="html" role="usernotes">User Notes:
  <ulink url='&blfs-wiki;/Xorg7'/></para>

  <bridgehead renderas="sect3">Xorg Download and Installation
  Instructions</bridgehead>

  <para>Xorg-7.0.0 introduced a completely auto-tooled, modular build system.
  With the new modular build system, it is no longer possible to download
  the entire package in a single file.  In fact, there may be as many as
  293 files that need to be fetched from the download location.  To assist
  with such a large task, installing <xref linkend="wget"/> is strongly
  recommended for downloading the needed files.  A complete
  <application>wget</application> file list is provided for each section
  that includes multiple packages.</para>

  <para>Given the number of packages available, deciding which packages you
  need to install for your particular setup may seem a bit overwhelming at
  first.  Take a look at
  <ulink url="http://wiki.x.org/wiki/ModuleDescriptions">this page</ulink>
  and
  <ulink url="http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-modular/2005-November/000801.html">this thread</ulink>
  to get an idea of what you will need.  If you are unsure, you should
  install all packages at the cost of extra disk space. To see which packages
  have changed between releases of Xorg, see the upstream
  <ulink url="http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/X11R&xorg7-version;/src/update/">update</ulink>
  and
  <ulink url="http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/X11R&xorg7-version;/src/deprecated/">deprecated</ulink>
  directories.</para>

  <note>
    <para>Even if you intend to download only the necessary packages, you
    should download the wget file lists.  The list of files are ordered by
    dependency, and the package versions listed in the files are known to
    work well with each other. Further, the wget file lists contain comments
    for specific packages that are deprecated or are not recommended to
    install. Newer packages are likely intended for the
    next release of <application>Xorg</application> and have already proved
    to be incompatible with current versions of software installed in BLFS.
    The installed size of <application>Xorg</application> can be reduced
    considerably by installing only the packages that you will need and use,
    however, the BLFS book cannot account for all dependencies and build
    options for the individual <application>Xorg</application> packages.
    The instructions assume that all packages have been built.  A
    <ulink url="&blfs-wiki;/Xorg7">wiki</ulink>
    page containing dependency information is under development.  You are
    encouraged to add to these pages if you discover additional information
    that may be helpful to other users who selectively install individual
    packages.</para>
  </note>

  <para>Additionally, because of the large number of repetitive commands,
  you are encouraged to script the build.  For most sections, you can use
  a script with commands similar to the following, to compile and install
  all packages in a wget file list:</para>

<screen>bash -e #exit on all errors
for package in $(grep -v '^#' ../wgetlist.wget)
do
  packagedir=$(echo $package | sed 's/.tar.bz2//')
  tar -xf $package
  cd $packagedir
  ./configure $XORG_CONFIG
  make
  make install
  cd ..
  rm -rf $packagedir
  rm -f $package
done 2&gt;&amp;1 | tee -a ../xorg-compile.log #log the entire loop</screen>

  <para>The above shell will exit immediately on error.  If it runs to
  completion, you should manually exit the shell before continuing on to
  the next set of instructions.</para>

  <sect2>
    <title>Setting up the Xorg Build Environment</title>

    <para>First, you'll need to create a working directory:</para>

<screen><userinput>mkdir xc &amp;&amp;
cd xc</userinput></screen>

    <para>As with previous releases of the X Window System, it may be
    desirable to install <application>Xorg</application> into an alternate
    prefix.  This is no longer common practice among Linux distributions.
    The common installation prefix for <application>Xorg</application> on
    Linux is <filename class="directory">/usr</filename>.  There is no
    standard alternate prefix, nor is there any exception in the current
    revision of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard for Release 7 of the X
    Window System.  Alan Coopersmith of Sun Microsystems, has recently
    stated "At Sun, we were using
    <filename class="directory">/usr/X11</filename> and plan to stick with
    it."  Only the <filename class="directory">/opt/*</filename> prefix or
    the <filename class="directory">/usr</filename> prefix adhere to the
    current FHS guidelines.</para>

    <para>Choose your installation prefix, and set the
    <envar>XORG_PREFIX</envar> variable with the following
    command:</para>

<screen><userinput>export XORG_PREFIX="<replaceable>&lt;PREFIX&gt;</replaceable>"</userinput></screen>

    <para>Throughout these instructions, you will use the following
    <command>configure</command> switches for all of the packages.  Create the
    <envar>XORG_CONFIG</envar> variable to use for this parameter
    substitution:</para>

<screen><userinput>export XORG_CONFIG="--prefix=$XORG_PREFIX --sysconfdir=/etc \
    --mandir=$XORG_PREFIX/share/man --localstatedir=/var"</userinput></screen>

    <para>If you've decided to use an alternate prefix, be sure to add
    <filename class="directory">
    <replaceable>&lt;PREFIX&gt;</replaceable>/bin</filename> to your
    <envar>PATH</envar> environment variable and  <filename class="directory">
    <replaceable>&lt;PREFIX&gt;</replaceable>/lib/pkgconfig</filename>
    to your <envar>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</envar> variable.  For detailed instructions,
    see <xref linkend="postlfs-config-profile"/>.  You should also add
    <filename class="directory">
    <replaceable>&lt;PREFIX&gt;</replaceable>/lib</filename> to the
    <filename>/etc/ld.so.conf</filename> file and <filename class="directory">
    <replaceable>&lt;PREFIX&gt;</replaceable>/share/man</filename> as
    a MANDATORY_MANPATH in <filename>/etc/man_db.conf</filename>.</para>

  </sect2>

</sect1>