Notes on Rebuilding XFree86/OS2 from Scratch
Holger Veit
Last modified March 8th, 2000
1. Preface
X11 and XFree86 were initially developed on Unix-based systems. Usually Unix
systems provide a rich number of tools and utilities to get certain things
done. Under OS/2, these tools are not installed, but ports are available
which are sometimes functionally equivalent to Unix utilities with the same
name, but also differ sometimes in a subtle way. This guide will give you
hints if you intend to rebuild the system from scratch under OS/2.
Please also read README.OS2 for end-user information, and set at least the
environment variables described there.
At the current time, the most recent version available is XFree86-4.0. This
is a full and unrestricted version which comes with complete source code. 4.0
is a highly experimental release, so many features that might have worked in
earlier versions, may now no longer work, or work differently. Be aware that
for OS/2, XFree86-4.0 is considered to be alpha software.
If you want to join the XFree86 developer team, e.g. to add support for cer-
tain hardware, please send a request to <BOD@XFree86.org>. Please think
about such a step carefully before, though, since much work is involved.
Please use the XFree86-4.0 source code as a test example how to compile the
system. The ability to manage that is a basic requirement for becoming a
developer.
2. Tools required
I have tried to reduce the number of external tools, but when looking back it
seems I were not very successful. At least I managed to get everything work-
ing with the native CMD.EXE shell only. However, there is still plenty of
software required. Most of this software is available from hobbes.nmsu.edu
or ftp.leo.org via anonymous FTP. The following shopping list shows what you
will need:
o gcc EMX/gcc emx 0.9C patch4 or later (0.9d preferred!)
o gzip GNU zip/unzip
o tar GNU tar
o patch Larry Wall's patch utility (attention: incompatible tool with
same name in OS/2)
o install BSD/GNU install
o rm,mv,cp GNU file utilities
o tee,.. GNU shell utilities
o groff GNU nroff/troff
o sed GNU sed stream editor
o grep GNU grep
o gawk GNU awk
o make GNU make 3.71/3.72 (use the one from Xprog.zip!)
o flex GNU flex
o bison GNU bison
o m4 GNU m4
o find GNU find (attention: incompatible tool with the same name in
OS/2)
If there is no version number given, any new version will do. Particularly
critical is only EMX/gcc and GNU make. Note that the second GCC implementa-
tion which might still be available from some archives is NOT compatible.
Furthermore, you need the XFree86 sources. These are available from the com-
mon XFree86 repositories. Look into a directory which is often named
/pub/XFree86/4.0/source.
3. Compiling and Installing
You need about 300MB of free HPFS space for the whole system. This does not
include space for the postscript and troff documentation files. I have never
installed them. Nor did I install the test subtree.
1. Install all the above utilities. Refer to the corresponding documenta-
tion. Verify that everything works well, particularly EMX.
2. It is a good idea to use the same or a similar structure I have. I
have made a directory \x11 on the partition for compiling and have put
everything below this tree. I found that a clean tree occupies less
than the half space of the disk, this gives me the opportunity to
rename this tree to \x11old and copy a new version to the same disk to
produce diffs. Last time the complete tree was arranged under the root
directory xc, this would become \x11\xc then.
3. To unpack the files you would usually execute the command
gzip -dc file.tar.gz | tar xvf -
in the \x11 directory. At the end you will usually see the irritating,
but non-fatal message "gzip: stdout Broken pipe". Ignore it.
4. After that, is is likely necessary to apply some patches, either from
the XConsortium or from the XFree86 project. Before you do this, enter
chmod -R a+rw \x11\xc
to make certain files in the tree writable.
5. There should be a file added-XXX accompanying the patch file which
lists the files that are newly created. The patch program has a problem
with creating new directories, so we need to create them on advance.
For each added-XXX file you find, execute from \x11
xc\config\util\added added-XXX
If there is no added-XXX file available, you can make one with the fol-
lowing instructions:
grep "\*\*\* xc/" patchfile >added-file
Edit added-file with a text editor and remove the *** at the beginning
and the time stamp at the end (search for a TAB and erase to the end of
the line). You get a list of file paths, one in a line, which is the
input to the added utility.
6. After that you can apply the patches in the right order. Usually this
is done by a command
patch -p -E <patchfile 2>&1 | tee patchlog
from the \x11 directory. Be aware to use the right patch - OS/2 has a
utility with the same name and different functionality. Don't use the
recommended -s option, this makes patch quiet, and you won't see prob-
lems in the patchlog file. Use
find \x11 -name *.rej -print
find \x11 -name *# -print
to find any rejects and unapplied patches (attention: yet another OS/2
program with wrong functionality). Normally there shouldn't be any
problems of this kind, else you have made a mistake. Finally remove the
original files with
find \x11 -name *.orig -print -exec rm {} ;
7. Go to the xc/config/cf directory and edit the xf86site.def file to
match your requirements (you probably don't want to compile all X
servers). Certain changes must be set to the following values:
o Disable if not already done any PC98 server; PC98 (Japanese
XFree86) does not work yet. Porters from Japan are welcome!
o #define WacomSupport NO #define ElographicsSupport
NO Both options are not yet supported.
o Tcl* and Tk* don't need to be set explicitly. Reasonable defaults
are in the other config files, provided you have a complete
XFree86/OS2 binary tree with the tcl/tk runtime support installed.
o #define BuildDynamicLoading NO This does not work.
8. Go to the directory xc\util\compress and make compress.exe there.
Install the program produced there in your path. I stumbled more than
once on half-ported compress programs on OS/2 ftp servers that are
defective w.r.t. reading and writing stdin/stdout. In some stage (font
compression) otherwise you will get a core dump of mkfontdir, because
all compressed fonts are corrupt.
9. Set the environment variable X11ROOT to something different than it is;
otherwise the installation process will overwrite your original
XFree86/OS2 installation. If you have not set this variable, go back to
the prefix section of this document: you have forgotten something.
10. Copy the file xc/pro-
grams/Xserver/hw/xfree86/etc/bindist/OS2/host.def.os2 to the location
xc/config/cf/host.def. Use this file to do any specific modifications
to imake variables, rather than editing the file xfree86.cf,
imake.tmpl, or os2.cf directly.
11. Copy the file xc/config/util/buildos2.cmd into the xc directory. If
this is a second or later attempt, you might need to copy the saved
toplevel Makefile.os2 back to Makefile.
12. Execute this buildos2.cmd command in the xc directory; it will produce
a logfile buildxc.log in this directory.
13. Go have a bucket of coffee, or better, buy new coffee - in Colombia!
The compile will need between 2 and 20 hours, depending on your selec-
tions, and the horse power of your hardware.
14. When finished, view the logfile for errors, and fix the problems if
there are some. I have managed to compile the whole system flawlessly,
so there is at least one configuration that works.
15. Finally, from the xc dir, execute
xmake install
xmake install.man
16. There are a few minor glitches in the installation:
1. The xdm and linkkit directories will fail in compile and instal-
lation. This is no problem and has no effect on the rest of the
system.
2. The imake.exe which is installed in \XFree86\bin is usually
defective. The one which was built initially and installed in
the root directory of the drive where you have the source tree is
okay. So simply copy this \imake.exe to the \XFree86\bin direc-
tory manually. Some day this might be fixed.
3. XF86Setup is not ported yet and won't work with the tcl/tk port
available for XFree86/OS2. My idea was to replace this by some
native installation tool, which I didn't find the time to do yet.
Feel free to spend a bit of time to play with XF86Setup if you
like.
Well, you see, this was quite easy :-)
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