how to use 4.0.6 & 4.2.0 simultaneously

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 10/05/04 03:35, purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
> 041004 Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> > 041004 Philip Webb & Jasper Huijsmans discussed:
> PW> i don't seem able to get any of 4.2 except the splash screens.
> JH> They cannot be installed in paralel.
> PW> i have KDE 3.2.3 & 3.3.0 happily installed alongside one another:
> JH> If you don't set up your environment so it runs xfce 4.2,
> JH> we cannot do anything about that.
> PW> so how shd i go about "setting up my environment" for 4.2 ?
> PW> i'm not complaining (smile), but you're not responding to the problem.
> > i'd bet you have your kde versions installed
> > to something like /usr/kde/3.2 and /usr/kde/3.3, right?
> 
> yes, that's where they are (Gentoo).
> 
> > it _is_ possible to install 4.0.x and 4.2.x in parallel,
> > but _only_ if you do not install either of them to a normal system prefix,
> > like /usr (and /usr/local on some systems).
> 
> no question it's possible: they are both installed !
> 4.0.6  was installed by a Gentoo ebuild, 4.2 by (Benny's?) installer: eg
> 
>   root: usr> d /usr/lib/xfce4   #   that's 4.0.6
>     mcs-plugins  panel-plugins
>   root: usr> d /usr/local/lib/xfce4   #   that's 4.2
>     mcs-plugins  modules  panel-plugins  splash  xffm  xfprint-plugins

what you're describing here is a packaging problem.  this really has nothing
to do with us.  i can only guarantee that parallel versions will work
properly under two conditions:
1) all versions are installed to a non-system prefix (e.g., /opt/xfce-4.0).
2) all necessary environment variables are set up to point to the proper
prefixes (LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH, etc.)

from xfce's point of view, that's the best i'm willing to do.  if you want
to be able to install parallel versions, you should complain to your
package maintainer to build packages that install to separate prefixes.
i'm not willing to indulge in further discussion on this.

> > i suppose it _is_ possible to install them both,
> > but that probably involves hacking a good number of the makefiles
> > and possibly the .pc files to make sure that the library search path
> > is specified in a certain way on the gcc link lines.
> 
> apparently that's not necessary, as the above shows.

it's necessary in some cases - anecdotal evidence shows that sometimes it
works, and sometimes it doesn't.  i'm not willing to support it with this
kind of track record.  i believe randy did some work on the build system,
but i don't know what came of that.

> the actual problem is that 4.2 doesn't start beyond the splash screen:
> there's a silver line at the bottom of the desktops
> & the exit screen is 4.2 , but everything else remains 4.0.6 .
> 
> i start from a non-X (real) terminal with '/usr/local/bin/startxfce4':
> shdn't that say to itself "look for libs, bins etc in  /usr/local 

no.  it's a script.  it has one simple function: locate xinitrc and
run it, starting an X server if needed.  the default xinitrc we ship
assumes that the proper binaries to run are in your path, and are the
first binaries of that name that show up in your path.  if you want to
launch this will a different assumed environment, you need to set this
up yourself.

> something seems to be wrong w the 4.2 material created by Benny's installer.
> one big defect of that installer is that it tells you absolutely nothing
> re what it has done: there's no mention of a log file or anything else.

a log would be nice, but this isn't the fault of the installer.  benny's
idea here was a generic installer that can be used for anything (not
just xfce), so it's not going to have any specific "how to migrate from
xfce 4.0 to 4.2"-type stuff.

> i can try BT's installer, which sounds more user-friendly,

hehe, that's funny.  i'd call it less user-friendly, but more flexible.

> or i can try doing it by hand from the regular bz2 tarball,
> but there's no point in either if i simply get the same null result.
> 
> further recommendations welcome ...
> 
> *** OK hold it: big PS !! ***
> 
> i just had another look at  /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc ,
> all of whose 'xf..' binaries have no  $DIR  prefix,
> st the 4.0.6 binaries wb used following my normal  $PATH .
> surely, this is a big bug:
> in a context where there mb  > 1  version installed,
> all such paths sb properly prefixed to select the correct version.
> it wb easy to do this w an environment var  XFCE4PATH ,
> which the user cd define when starting up: eg
> 
>   XFCE4PATH=/usr/local startxfce4

as i said above, this isn't a bug.  this is Just How It works.  if you
want it to do something else, wrap your call to startxfce4 in a script
that customises your environment.

personally, now that we have a session manager, i think the separate
xinitrc can essentially go away.  the customisation type stuff that
xinitrc does (e.g., merging Xft settings using xrdb) might be better
done in the session manager itself (or possibly MCS).  i wouldn't expect
this to happen until 4.4 (where we'll have a new settings manager anyway),
since we still have some legacy stuff that gets done in our xinitrc.

ok, so i'm rambling, and i should get back to this conference...

	-brian