FS#13630 - hwd produces bloated xorg.conf sample

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Matěj Týč (bubla) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 14:55 GMT
Last edited by Thayer Williams (thayer) - Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 01:56 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Very Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
I have found out that now, when we have Xorg that can autodetect monitors, the xorg.conf sould me very short
and that all those entries should be there only if the autodetection fails or produces results that are not reasonable.

Moreover, there are also "InputDevice" sections with serial, PS2 etc. mice that should be completely left out since
Xorg supports hotplugging AFAIK...

Additional info:
* package version(s)
hwd 5.4.3-1
* config and/or log files etc.
generated xorg.conf.vesa attached

Steps to reproduce:
hwd -x
vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf.vesa
   xorg.conf.vesa (11.7 KiB)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Thayer Williams (thayer)
Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 01:56 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Additional comments about closing:  see comment
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 15:11 GMT
hwd is not an official Arch Linux tool.
Please file bug reports here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=40223&p=6
Comment by Pierre Schmitz (Pierre) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 16:02 GMT
You should use X -configure instead.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 18:10 GMT
As said by Greg and Pierre, hwd is not an official tool. I even advise against using it for generating an xorg.conf. IMHO the only way to generate a sane xorg.conf is using Xorg -configure, and most of the times it's not even needed at all.
Comment by kongokris 2 (nut543) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 23:07 GMT
i'm so sick of this! get.this.autotool.out.of.arch
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 02 March 2009, 23:17 GMT
I'm opting for that on every bugreport we get about hwd and bad xorg.conf files, but somehow the upstream maintainer manages to fix it a bit and our maintainer decides to keep it and update the package again.
Comment by kongokris 2 (nut543) - Tuesday, 03 March 2009, 22:56 GMT
Yeah. Iv'e lost track of how many times iv'e seen $some_guy having a problem with -- really any autotool, but this time -- hwd on the forums.

The sad part is that the xorg.conf isn't *that* hard to understand, and especially now when you can just input any nonstandard section and have it work. When autotools still exists that does this for you it seems much harder than it is... (not to mention that it doesn't enable xorg hotplugging)
Comment by kongokris 2 (nut543) - Saturday, 04 April 2009, 15:44 GMT
Can we please remove this tool from repo? it seems no matter how newbiesh people are they manage to find this tool and consequently run into trouble. Here's just the latest example i happened to run upon: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=68970

I repeat: If the tool exists, people will use it because they fear xorg configuration. However, this is an ungrounded, no-longer-applicable belief and so users dig ther own grave, and we help them out.
Comment by kongokris 2 (nut543) - Saturday, 04 April 2009, 15:52 GMT
more: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=69066 ...
Comment by Matěj Týč (bubla) - Saturday, 04 April 2009, 18:13 GMT
I don't think that hwd is bad. But there is no reason for it to create xorg.conf files.
This option should be deffinitelly removed.
Comment by Thayer Williams (thayer) - Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 01:56 GMT
I agree that hwd doesn't need to produce xorg config files, but the utility is handy in other ways. It has been stated many times before that it isn't an official Arch tool (and neither are the hundreds of other packages in the extra repo).

If users decide to blindly use an autotool (regardless of what it automates) then they will suffer the consequences sooner or later. Christ, the generated configs are even commented with warnings about refresh rate settings, etc.

Just because one feature of a particular tool doesn't work with an updated piece of software doesn't mean the entire tool is shite and should be removed. hwd has been updated to 5.5 and includes the necessary ServerFlags to address input issues.

hwd is not intended for hotplug seekers. If you want a plug-n-play Xorg, then don't generate a config at all.

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