xorg-7.6 depends on everything but the kitchen sink

[hiro]

why xf86-all by default?
There already is a default which should work on most people's computers: Xvesa.
When they want other features they can chose manually which graphic card to support, no?

[curaga]

It's not always that easy to say which driver goes with which card.

I feel with these bigger collections it's better to err on the side of caution/ease of use. Just like one might want compiletc, but with gcc3 instead of 4; it's still better to keep the default gcc in the set.

[hiro]

I'd use Windows or Ubuntu if I wanted this kind of bloat. Anyway, nothing I can change I guess.

[maro]

... Anyway, nothing I can change I guess.

I wouldn't be quite so pessimistic. As I'm predominately a user of 'Xvesa' I had not much of a need to really take a closer look, but I had equally been a bit surprised by this "everything but the kitchen sink" approach. OTOH I'd always assumed that the following "trick" was fully intended to be used by some "space concious" user as these drivers were all so nicely split into individual extensions.

The basic idea is to replace 'xf86-video-all.tcz' in 'Xorg-7.6.tcz.dep' with the one driver you really need, and the other 'xf86-video-*.tcz*' files could then be removed. In my little test I used QEMU (v0.11.1 with KQEMU on a WinXP host) and even though I kind of knew which one I needed I did first install 'Xorg-7.6.tcz' proper, and after starting the 'Xorg' server I did:

Code: (bash) [Select]

tc@box:~$ grep Loading /var/log/Xorg.0.log | sed '/drivers/! d ; s#.* ##' | xargs ls -l | sed 's#.*/tcloop/## ; s#/#\t/#'
xf86-video-cirrus       /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/cirrus_alpine.so
xf86-video-cirrus       /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/cirrus_alpine.so
xf86-video-cirrus       /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/cirrus_drv.so
xf86-video-cirrus       /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/cirrus_drv.so
Xorg-7.6        /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so
Xorg-7.6        /usr/local/lib/X11/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
This output now told me that I wanted to replace 'xf86-video-all.tcz' in the dependency file with 'xf86-video-cirrus.tcz', which I did via
    sed -i 's#xf86-video-all.tcz#xf86-video-cirrus.tcz#' /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/Xorg-7.6.tcz.dep
and then remove the surplus files, which I did via
    ls /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/xf86-video-* | grep -v xf86-video-cirrus | xargs rm -f

In my case I saw a saving of ca. 2900 kBytes after removing these files. I furthermore realised that I could also do without firmware-radeon.tcz, graphics-3.0.3-tinycore.tcz and i2c-3.0.3-tinycore.tcz, which meant another 900 kBytes "gone". But the last two of these extra extensions are required by xf86-video-intel.tcz and all three by xf86-video-ati.tcz, so they should only be removed when they are indeed surplus to requirements.

[curaga]

I think hiro's primary concern is the first download, IIRC he was on a quota (3g modem?). In that case, you'd have to do something like

Code: [Select]

tce-fetch Xorg-7.6.tcz
tce-fetch Xorg-7.6.tcz.dep
#edit the dep file as needed
for i in `cat Xorg-7.6.dep`; do tce-load -w $i; done

[hiro]

I didn't know tce-fetch yet. Lots of surprises for people upgrading.

I guess I'll nag on later.

[Rich]

Hi hiro
Neither did I, but checking my TC2.1 system shows it existed already back then.

[roberts]

It been a cli support tool from the dawn of core!

[maro]

Just a little warning to all who now want to use tce-fetch: it's actually tce-fetch.sh (spot the little difference) that you are after.

[roberts]

Second warning. Using low level tools can cause unexpected results. No niceities like recursively loading dependencies. Do not use unless you know the consequences.

[caminati]

The Xorg-7.6 -> xf86-video-all dependency has been perplexing me as well since its inception.
There is some point in it, 'cause anyone not wanting to use its gpu driver could always resort to Xvesa.
However, this dependency leads to bloat, which I feel not much compatible with TC's spirit.
I was thinking if reversing the dependency:
xf86-video-all -> Xorg-7.6
would make any sense.
In this way a more knowledgeable could load Xorg-7.6 and its specific driver separately, while the casual user could just load xf86-video-all to get better chances of having the whole thing working.

[hiro]

To get away from this kind of state I would love to put a bit of time into a "recommendation system", which uses hardware ids and compares them to a database of these hardware ids we support in our kernel modules. I've already looked into it and the database is simple to create from the modules.
This system would present the user with a list of recommended extensions to install for his specific hardware.
I just want the encouragement of the admins first, because at the end it has to be updated against the content of all these module.tcz extensions. Of course I could just download them all the time, but I'm sure pushing is better than polling in this case.

[curaga]

OK, video-all dep removed, and a mention added in the info file.

@hiro:
Feel free to create such an extension. It would only need to be updated once per kernel update, grab original-modules to get all modules from the kernel build.

I think it's acceptable not to list the 3rd-party modules in the recommendations.