X11R7
More info
- Creator
- X.Org Foundation
- Released
- 2005
- Type
- Release of the X Window System
- Predecessor
- X11R6
The December 2005 release in which X.Org sawed the monolithic source tree into hundreds of modules, swapped imake for Autotools, and turned "X11R" into a version number nobody needs to track any more.
Until then X had always shipped as one enormous source tree built with imake, and anyone who wanted a new video driver rebuilt everything. The X.Org Foundation released X11R7.0 on 21 December 2005, the same day as the final monolithic X11R6.9 with identical code, split into hundreds of packages for protocol headers, libraries, applications, drivers, fonts and the server itself, each with its own version and release cadence. The /usr/X11R6 directory was abandoned for /usr, and distributions could update one driver without touching the rest.
Bundled releases, known as katamaris, continued for a while: 7.1 with AIGLX in 2006, 7.3 with RandR 1.2 and hot-pluggable monitors in 2007, 7.5 with XInput 2 in 2009, and 7.7 in June 2012 was the last. Since then the modules are released individually, and it is the X server's own version number, 1.x and later 21.1, that people refer to. "X11R7" mostly survives in old paths and the odd man page.