Re: client/server?

[Philip Brown <philb@soda.berkeley.edu>]

>>>>[From Mark Wedel]
    
     I would freeze new versions if I actually got the idea that client/server
    woudl be seriously worked on.  The problem I see is that if I freeze
    it (no new releases), if it takes 6 months to do client/server, then other
    people will likely have put out patches or their own versions that would
    need to get merged in or lost.

Fair enough (sort of :-)

How about, at some point, you "freeze" the code, but allow official patch
diffs for bugs, etc.

So, while you could still provide bug updates, the tree that
client/server people are working from would not change.
(ie they'd work from the PRE-diff'd tree, since they're going to change
 most stuff anyways. When done, THEN they could hand-diff in anything
 that still might be relevant)

If people put out there own "special" versions in the interim.. well,
this will always happen. I don't think we should spend too much time
worrying about it
    

You're certainly correct in saying that client/server issues are still
needed to be decided beore something will get done, thou :-)


About the byte-order issue... It's NOT THAT HARD, people!

X depends on a particular byte ordering, and certain bit lengths.
This is GREAT, because there are defines in the Imake/header stuff. You
can pull out of the X support files, information on the machine you are
compiling on.

You can pull out:
 byte order
 bit order
 what to use for 8-bit value
 what to use for 16-bit value
 what to use for 32-bit value


What else do you need, folks?!!

(Please don't give me any "what about windoze/mac, whatever" stuff. Those
are specific architechtures, not the nice general architechture that X
allows. Whoever does the client port for those machines is going to be
working on a completely machine-specific source tree anyways. They'll
just hard-code in the appropriate values, most likely.)



PS: I would personally love to do coding on this, but
1) I'm starting a new job, so I have way less time.
2) I'm going to be under some nasty non-disclosure agreements, so it is not
    beneficial for me to do actual code :-/

    Philip