You are not logged in.

#1 2017-09-08 19:11:46

birchbark
Member
Registered: 2015-01-16
Posts: 5

gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

Hi there,

I had a well-running system set up with GDM/Gnome/Wayland and no xorg dependencies. I had some trouble with video acceleration in both ffmpeg/gstreamer based players and in order to troubleshoot the problem broke down and installed Xorg.

Ended up being that, at least for the ffmpeg based player (mpv), it was a bug that building from the latest ffmpeg fixed. So, great, back to Wayland!

BUT, it appears now that pacman sees just about everything as being dependent on xorg now. Primarily gdm is dependent on xorg-server (which I am pretty sure didn't auto-install when I installed gdm on top of weston/xwayland). But also, even firefox's dependency on "ttf-fonts" traces back over to xorg stuff.

My suspicion is that the dependency tree somehow changed to assume it was an Xorg based install of gdm? I tried removing gdm and removing xorg-server and reinstalling gdm again but it wanted to pull xorg-server in.

Am I missing something? Do I just yank out xorg ignoring dependencies? Was I not paying attention when I installed gdm or firefox and they actually pulled in these dependents at the time? Obviously GDM has no dependence on xorg since it defaults to wayland at this point in time.

Offline

#2 2017-09-08 19:14:57

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

birchbark wrote:

Obviously GDM has no dependence on xorg since it defaults to wayland at this point in time.

Not according to the package page (or `pacman -Qi gdm`).


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

Offline

#3 2017-09-08 19:26:11

birchbark
Member
Registered: 2015-01-16
Posts: 5

Re: gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

Yes, I saw that already in the package list. I was not talking about Arch in that sentence, I was talking about gdm. Am I correct that gdm has no dependency on xorg-server in terms of the software itself? (Just like those who install xorg-server and then install-gdm don't depend on wayland).

Everything I am aware of with regards to Gnome's transition to wayland (plus the fact that I feel like I installed it over weston without pulling in xorg) seems to indicate that gdm has no dependency on xorg-server. I am pretty sure that when I installed gdm the first time over wayland and logged in there was no option for "Gnome over X" in the drop down.

Thanks for replying. I appreciate you being factual, but some further explanation would be helpful. Can you verify that if I had wayland and gnome and all dependencies thereof installed, and then went to install gdm, that it definitely would haved pulled in xorg-server? Does Arch not feature dependency trees that can use either X or Y (when looking at the package list online it only lists "dependencies" and then (optional)... but I thought for thigns such as, say, a video driver, many such individual packages can satisfy a general need.)

Last edited by birchbark (2017-09-08 19:28:01)

Offline

#4 2017-09-08 20:24:35

birchbark
Member
Registered: 2015-01-16
Posts: 5

Re: gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

Okay, so assuming I must have just spaced and not noticed that xorg-server was pulled in by gdm on the initial install I went ahead and installed lightdm with lightdm-gtk-greeter which appeared to not be dependent on xorg. That failed to start without xorg-server because it appeared to be trying to locate an x session.

So out with the DM I guess. I just used the script mentioned at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GN … d_sessions to have any login from tty1 automatically start gnome-wayland. A graphical drop down with the username autopopulated would be nice, but not if it means pulling in a ton of dependencies.

Offline

#5 2017-09-08 21:42:15

eschwartz
Fellow
Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

Wat.

jasonwryan told you so in the first place. The package depends on xorg-server, because the package needs it to run. Issues like this usually happen because of shared library dependencies. e.g. I have wayland installed, only because gtk3 mesa and mpv depend on it.

pacman cannot somehow automagically modify the dependencies of packages just because you installed another package. There is no concept of a "wayland system" vs. an "xorg system". There is only an "arch system", which has the packages you explicitly installed and any dependencies those might have dragged in, as determined by what packages must be physically present on your system in order for the software to run (whether they get used for practical functionality, is irrelevant).

If multiple packages are drop-in replacements for each other, they will *provide* some common concept, and packages that can use either implementation will depend on the "provides" name rather than a specific package. You will see this in pacman's output, as it references the provides name rather than whatever you happen to have installed...

Last edited by eschwartz (2017-09-08 21:45:46)


Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

Offline

#6 2017-09-09 03:09:06

birchbark
Member
Registered: 2015-01-16
Posts: 5

Re: gdm dependency on xorg-server; firefox, etc dependent on xorg stuff?

Thanks for the clarification on the "provides" language. Not all dynamic dependencies need to have a shared abstraction, though. As a former software developer for large backend libraries, there are many ways to do it.

I am guessing gdm will be migrated off of any Xorg dependency in the future as that seems to be the ultimate goal of the Gnome/Gdm/Wayland/Fedora team... I had ASSUMED it had already happened, else they wouldn't be making the wayland session the default, but I assumed wrong.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB