xinit-1.3.4-1: breaking backwards compatibility

[Laurens Blankers]

On 30-12-2014 13:46, Angelo Graziosi wrote:
> What about changing the way X server is started?

I could change the way I start X, and I have successfully gotten things
to work by doing so. But that is not my point. My point is that I need
to make significant changes to the configuration to get back to the
functionality that used to work.

> But it may be that you have other needs which require starting X
differently.

I will describe my use case: I use PuTTY to connect to several Linux
servers, sometimes I need to run a X11 program on those servers (e.g.
virt-manager) and I would like to get the output on my Windows desktop.
In order to do that I install Cygwin, check the xinit package, wait till
everything is installed. Then I start X server using the icon in my
Programs menu. The first time an annoying xterm window pops up, which I
suppress by running 'touch .startxwinrc'. Then I drag the X icon to my
Start-up folder, so that it starts every time my desktop boots and sits
in the tray area, where it doesn't bother me, ready to be used when needed.

With this update the X server fails to start, well actually it starts,
but exists immediately because .startxwinrc is empty. But there is no
error message, or warning, or something to tell me this. So it took me
30 minutes to figure this out. After fixing it (sleep inf) I now have a
very annoying icon on my taskbar representing the .startxwinrc which is
still 'running'.

Once I got that figured out I started PuTTY. But things didn't work. As
it turns out this is because of the nolisten, which is now the default.
A workaround suggested is to use 'ssh -Y' in stead of 'ssh -X', but I
don't use SSH I use PuTTY and it doesn't support 'trusted' X11
forwarding. So to fix this I would have to go and change the startxwin
script, a change which will be reverted every time I upgrade.

Once I figured this out I just reverted back to the previous version of
xinit and went on to do the things I wanted to do.

Now, I am not against changing the way things work. I am definitely not
against making the default more secure. And I think it is perfectly fine
to have things change when people install Cygwin fresh.

However _please_ think of all the people who just upgrade for the
bug/security fixes and just want things to work. Ideally there should be
an automatic script that sets things up for us automatically so that
everything works as we were used to (e.g. automatically adding 'sleep
inf' to the end of .startxwin might do). And at the very least the
changes should be clearly documented, preferably a pop-up when
installing the update, but at the very least a notice on the main
website and FAQ. Posting an announcement to a mailing list with a
details list of changes from which one may infer that things completely
break just doesn't qualify as proper documentation in this case.

I would like to reiterate my request to revert these changes, e.g. by
releasing a 1.3.6 which is identical to 1.3.2, so that people like me,
those not normally following cygwin-xfree can continue to work.

Laurens


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