An example of how things should *not* be done

[Timo Aaltonen]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, Dylan McCall wrote:

> Ideally, couldn't the install script for xserver-input-wacom add the
> necessary stuff to xorg.conf itself?

The driver is installed on every system (due to x-x-input-all), so it 
wouldn't work.

The dexconf approach would only work for tablets, but not pluggable 
devices that aren't plugged in during install/reconfiguration. So, a 
possible approach would be to use the device manager (jockey) to add the 
necessary configuration. The problem with it is that it's only run on 
session startup, but Martin Pitt pointed out that gnome-volume-manager has 
some support for hotplugged tablets, so that could be used until jockey 
supported hotplug. This will be discussed at the next UDS, and might be 
implemented for 8.04.1 if all goes well :)

> I imagine that would lead to really ugly xorg configuration files,
> though, as we see with the old Screens & Graphics tool. I guess what
> we need is a magical, open-ended and centralized tool for configuring
> xorg.conf that everyone (including the end user) uses. Would help if
> this wasn't a single big file...

There's a proposal on Debian XSF wiki about having a xorg.conf.d directory 
which would hold configuration snippets from packages etc. that the server 
would read.

t