Updated: rxvt-20050409-9

Charles Wilson cygwin@cwilson.fastmail.fm
Mon Nov 17 16:39:00 GMT 2008


Jerry D. Hedden wrote:
> There are still too many requires for this Version -9.

No, actually, there aren't.

> Version -7 only required 'cygwin' and 'bash'.  This is perfect.

Those requires were wrong, given the as-shipped app-defaults/Rxvt. It
uses -- and has used, for two years -- font-bitstream-vera-ttf.  Except
back then, that font was shipped as part of xorg-x11-fscl, which, had
the old rxvt package required THAT, it would have pulled in ALL of X11.
 NOT acceptable, even if that meant rxvt's setup.hint was actually
WRONG. But it was /bad/ for the setup.hint to be wrong.

I could have reverted apps-default/Rxvt back to "fixed" or "Courier" or
some such. But I didn't:

=== quote from cygwin-announce:
"This release is intended to fix only one issue: the recent release of
modular X made some file system changes such that rxvt could not find
its system-default settings file.  Now it can.

This release does NOT attempt to address any other known bugs, and I
still have a few patch submissions sitting in my queue. Those will
probably be addressed during the cygwin-1.7 transition, not before."
=== end quote

I /did/, however, fix the setup.hint file so that it was /correct/ --
especially as NOW, I can accurately require font-bitstream-vera-ttf and
ONLY pull in a few font-related packages and NOT any of X11.

We can discuss whether to remove the /previously existing/ but
undocumented dependency on font-bitstream-vera-ttf later (see "during
the cygwin-1.7 transition, not before")

Until then, you can of course unselect within setup the packages you do
not want, and then on the warning page, UNcheck the box that says,
"Install these packages to meet dependencies (RECOMMENDED)". You'll only
need to do this each time you upgrade rxvt -- which let's face it, isn't
all that often.

> Version -9 requires: cygwin bash coreutils font-bitstream-vera-ttf
> Requiring coreutils seems okay although I don't know the reason for it.

The preremove and postinstall scripts use "mv", "cp", and "touch". They
always have. It just wasn't documented in the setup.hint requires:
before now. Having inaccurate requires: lines plays havoc with setup.exe
running postinstall scripts in the correct order.

> However, font-bitstream-vera-ttf should be removed because it also
> brings in the following:
>     fontconfig
>     mkfontdir
>     mkfontscale
>     libfontconfig1
>     libfontenc1
>     libfreetype26

Faulty logic. rxvt -- as currently packaged -- DOES require
font-bitstream-vera-ttf, and that package DOES require all those others.
Sure, AFTER installation, you can re-configure your version so that it
doesn't use that font, and that's okay.  But as-distributed,
font-bitstream-vera-ttf is a requirement of rxvt*-9, as are those
sub-dependencies.

Again, whether this is advisable or not is something that can be
discussed later. See
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2007-09/msg00373.html

But removing those dependencies means actually *removing those
dependencies* -- not simply neglecting to mention them in the setup.hint.

> Further, when I tried to use Version -9, it used the wrong font and
> the window background was blue instead of my defined black.
> Obviously, it wasn't using my /home/$USER/.Xdefaults or

rxvt searches both
  static const char *const xnames[2] = { ".Xdefaults", ".Xresources" };

If you are starting rxvt via a windows shortcut, then you need to have
HOME defined as a windows environment variable (it usually isn't), not
just set it in your ~/.bashrc -- if you want rxvt to know where
"~/.Xdefaults" actually is.  Rxvt doesn't explicitly use "/home/$USER/",
it uses "getenv("HOME")/[.Xdefaults|.Xresources]".

Note that you can also set XAPPLRESDIR to the appropriate app-defaults
directory. The old startxwin.bat file did this, and set it to
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults.  The new startxwin.bat file doesn't set
that variable at all.

> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt.

The whole point of this exercise was to use /etc/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt,
because /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/ doesn't exist anymore. And the
default version of the app-defaults file, located under /etc/, DOES
specify a blue background.

--
Chuck

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