[oi-dev] X packages to deprecate

Mon Sep 5 13:53:20 UTC 2016

On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 8:30 PM, Alan Coopersmith
<alan.coopersmith at oracle.com> wrote:
> On 08/27/16 04:40 AM, Aurélien Larcher wrote:
>>
>> Are we able to simply and effectively deprecate these packages or are
>> there issues to foresee?
>
>
> You can probably guess my opinion based on how many of them I've already
> obsoleted in  https://hg.java.net/hg/solaris-x11~x-s12-clone/ but since
> others asked what these do, I can provide some background.
>
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwinc at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwman at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwopt at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwplr at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwplt at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwpmn at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/compatibility/packages/SUNWxwslb at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> These were a transition aid for our package refactoring, when we
> went from "Put all the headers for all libraries in SUNWinc,
> all the libraries & programs in SUNWplt, all the man pages for
> all the programs in SUNWxwman and for all the libraries in SUNWxwpmn"
> to following the upstream groupings & IPS model of keeping headers,
> man pages, etc. with the software they are for, to allow people
> following S10 instructions or using SVR4 packages with old
> dependencies to get the same sets of files those used to provide.
>
> I've not deleted them mostly because they're low cost - there's
> little to maintain as they're just dependencies on other packages,
> but someday the transition will probably end.
>
>> pkg:/library/motif/libdpstkxm at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This lets you use DPS (see below) in a Motif application.
> Two ancient bits mixed together makes something far more obscure!
> I have no idea if anything ever used it.
>
>> pkg:/system/kernel/hardware-cursor at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This module provides hardware cursor acceleration for Xsun on SPARC fb
> drivers.  It's actually a clever little streams module you push on the
> mouse stream that causes it to update the cursor directly on the fb driver,
> all without ever leaving the kernel to context switch in the X server.
> But cleverness isn't useful if you have nothing to use it with, so we
> dropped it once Xsun was gone.
>
>> pkg:/x11/compatibility/links-svid at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> Long long ago, Sun put all of X in /usr/openwin.
> The System V Interface Definition standard needed a vendor independent path,
> so said to use /usr/X and allowed Sun to make it a symlink to /usr/openwin.
>
>> pkg:/x11/library/dps at 7.5,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This is the Display Postscript (DPS) client library for old software written
> to use this X11 extension.   Unless you're displaying to an ancient server
> like Xsun that has this deeply proprietary extension, all it does today is
> let your software run without complaining the library is missing and query
> the server to find the extension isn't there.
>
> Removing this breaks the ancient OpenWindows AnswerBook display tool that
> was obseleted by "point a web browser at docs.sun.com" 2 decades ago, and
> the Java SE runtime environment for Java 1.4 and before.   Preventing people
> from running Java code that hasn't gotten security patches since 2008 seems
> like a public service to me.
>
>> pkg:/x11/library/libowconfig at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This reads and writes config files for the Xsun server.
> If you ever ship the openXsun sources I released shortly before
> OpenSolaris.org
> died you need it, if not, you don't.
>
>> pkg:/x11/library/toolkit/libxaw4 at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>> pkg:/x11/library/toolkit/libxaw5 at 0.5.11,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> These provide backwards binary compatibility for Xaw apps compiled on older
> Solaris releases - libXaw4 for those built on Solaris 2.2 or prior (yes,
> 1992ish), libXaw5 for those build on Solaris 2.3 through 10.
>
> libXaw7 is the current version of this, introduced to OpenSolaris in 2008.
>
>> pkg:/x11/network/rstart at 1.0.3,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This is an old solution for using rsh to start X11 apps remotely.
> It was superseded by "ssh -X" in the mid-90's.
>
>> pkg:/x11/network/x11-network-proxies at 7.5,5.11-2013.0.0.0
>
>
> This package contains the lbxproxy, xfwp, xfindproxy, and proxymngr
> utilities
> for proxying the X11 protocol over low-bandwidth connections or through a
> firewall.
>
> Over a decade ago, Keith Packard & Jim Gettys compared lbxproxy to ssh with
> X11 Forwarding & Compression and found ssh provided equivalent or better
> performance and latency to lbxproxy, and concluded:
>   "LBX does not solve either the authentication and security problems that
>    SSH solves. We saw little evidence of LBX ever helping. At least as
>    implemented, LBX looks to have been a bad idea."
>    - http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/usenix2003/
>
> As a result X.Org deprecated LBX and dropped support for it from Xorg 1.2
> and later releases, so the Xorg servers in Solaris 10 & later do not have
> any LBX support, only older servers like Xsun do.   I've never seen anyone
> use the others, since SSH X11 tunneling is far easier to setup and more
> secure.

Alan, sorry for the delay and thank you very much for your invaluable input.
I understand that most of them can be deprecated of left as-is without
incuring any cost :)
Moreover I really appreciate the background information on the
different components, your messages should be compiled into an
exhaustive X11 history page :)
Best regards

Aurelien

>
>         -alan-
>
>
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