Re: Cut down xfree server for XDMCP only

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev dot net>]

I'd thought I mention that this has been done before, by both myself and 
Matthew Donald.  Both done in the time before the option to install X via 
setup.exe.

My versions are available at
http://www.webone.com.au/~rasjidw/WinXTerm-0.32.zip
http://www.webone.com.au/~rasjidw/WinXTerm-0.4-Test53.zip
with the original website for the project at 
http://lasp.sourceforge.net/winxterm/.

Both of my versions are *very* outdated now, as I had put the project on hold 
until such time as X was installable via setup.exe.  I had essentially 
decided to take Robert's approach, but have had no time over the last few 
months now the setup.exe option is available.  The main reason I decided to 
go with the setup.exe option is due to the 'you can't have two versions of 
cygwin.dll running at the same time' problem.  And in fact you can use 
setup.exe and still only have a 5-6 MB download (assuming you don't install 
fonts etc and don't actually want anything more than X and bash to work or be 
available).

Doland's project is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/winfree86/, as was also 
delphi based.  I don't think he has done anything on it since January, 
although I have not had any recent contact with him.

Strangely enough, I was planning to start work on  project again this month, 
and perhaps even this weekend, with my first step being to do the script to 
configure XDMCP access on a 'standard' linux distribution.  My planned second 
step was to then create a 'wizard' that would only download the components 
you need (much less than even a base level cygwin install) and then use 
setup.exe to install them.  Unfortunately I don't know C or C++, and so was 
planning to do the install wizard in either python and wxWindows or Java and 
Swing.  If someone want to do a 'native' windows version, that would be fine 
by me.  I'd be more than happy just to play bug-tester etc.

Once I got this far, I was going to talk to Robert about possible ways to 
enable 'non-cygwin packaged' programs to talk to and utilise setup.exe.  I 
have noticed that a number of open source Linux/Unix programs have their 
windows version using the cygwin dll, but don't use setup.exe.  It only takes 
two of these programs to be using sufficiently different versions of the 
cygwin dll for things to start breaking.  This worries me quite a bit, as 
what will happen is that people will simply say 'Oh damn, this open source 
product is buggy.  I'll go back to using closed source software, it works 
better.'  For example, MySQL use the cygwin dll for their windows port (see 
http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html) but they are using cygwin 
1.3.9 not the current version.  This could cause problems in the future if 
someone does not keep their mysql setup up to date but also uses Cygwin and 
does keep it up to date (or vice-versa).

Because of the above, I think it is important to have a XDMCP only version of 
Cgywin-XFree86 that does sit within the setup.exe framework.  If no-one else 
does this version, then I will, but I can't guarantee exactly when.  If 
someone else is going to do it anyway, then I wont, as I have plenty of other 
things I can be doing.  ;-)

Anyway, enough of my ravings for the evening.  It is late and I should be 
asleep.

Cheers,

Rasjid.