Re: Problem upgrading Xorg--libtool issue?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello David,

sorry for the delay.

* David Ronis wrote on Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 10:06:51PM CEST:
> I'm trying to build Xorg (the git master version) on a slackware 12.1,
> i686 box using gcc 4.3.3 and libtool 2.2.6.  The build/install went
> fine, but the result was a disaster--basically, none of my pre-existing
> graphical programs (e.g., gnome, firefox) would work.  
> 
> The problem is that the pre-existing codes were linked against an older
> version of Xorg, one that included something called libxcb-xlib.so.
> This lib is no longer in Xorg, the needed functionality having been
> moved to other libraries.  Nonetheless, when I try to run something I
> get errors relating to libxcb-xlib not being found.  Putting back the
> old libxcb-xlib fails as some symbols are no longer defined.
> 
> The xcb folks have only one solution: rebuild everything.  I'm sure that
> this will ultimately work, but given the effort required, is not
> something I'm willing to do.

It would be the only really clean solution though.

> So, I was hoping someone can suggest an alternate solution.  For
> example, can I simply remove the libxcb-xlib references from all the .la
> files?  How about simply making a dummy libxcb-xlib.so library?

Well, you can try this, but whether it has a chance to work at all
depends on quite a few factors: whether the API or ABI have changed
at all in the meantime, whether all libraries/programs that have a
DT_NEEDED entry for libxcb-xlib.so.X also have DT_NEEDED entries
for the libraries where the required symbols are in now, *and*
their sonames have not changed, or at least something further up
in the dependency tree loads the required code; whether symbol
versioning has been used and if yes, whether the requires symbol
versions all still exist; then it could also depend upon whether
the Xorg people have not played games with -Bsymbolic.

If I were to try it, then yes, making libxcb-xlib.so a symlink to a
versioned dummy library libxcb-xlib.so.X (don't forget -Wl,-soname!)
sounds like a good approach to me.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf