Upgrading Xorg-X11 on Fedora Core 2.

Using Fedora Core 3 SRPMs

CATEGORY-Upgrading

Tested on Fedora Core 2

Submitted: April 23, 2005

I've been putting off upgrading to Fedora Core 3 from Fedora Core 2 for quite some time now. FC2 just seems to run for me. One of the reasons I want to update, though, is to get the lates version of Xorg-X11. FC3 came with Xorg-X11 6.8.1, and has been updated to 6.8.2. FC2 came with 6.7, and the latest update for it is 6.7.1.
Recently, I learned a little bit about compiling optimized RPMs from SRPMs while maintaining compatibility with common FC2 repositories. You can read a little about it on the step I wrote.
So, the thought occurred to me, "what about trying to rebuild FC3's SRPM of Xorg-X11 on FC2?"
Well, I grabbed the SRPM from http://fedora.redhat.com and gave it a shot... and it seems to be working. Here's what I did:

Get the SRPM

I downloaded the SRPM from fedora.redhat.com. And installed it

$ rpm -ivh xorg-x11-6.8.2-1.FC3.13.src.rpm

Investigation

I don't know alot about spec files, but I do know they pretty much control how RPMs get built. So, I decided it'd be a good idea to poke around in the provided spec file for clues to whether building this FC3 SRPM on FC2 might be problematic, when I chan accross this section:

%if ! %{build_autodetect_mode}
# Set *one* of the following build targets to 1 as appropriate
# Fedora Core development builds a.k.a. "rawhide"
%define build_fc4               0
%define build_rhel4            1
%define build_fc3               0
%define build_fc2               0
%define build_mharris        0
%else
%define build_fc4               0
%define build_rhel4            0
%define build_fc3               0
%define build_fc2               0
%define build_mharris        1

Doing it (almost)

Now that looked promising. Note the "%define build_fc2" there. I changed that 0 to a 1, changed the 1 next to the define build_fc3 and set about building the RPMs via

$ rpmbuild -bb --target=athlon xorg-x11.spec

A short 90 minutes later, and I had a complete set of binaries for FC2 of Xorg-X11-6.8.2. Built from Fedora Core 3 SRPMs. Unfortunately, they were all called:

xorg-x11-<foo>-FC3.13.athlon.rpm

Well, that's not quite what I wanted.

Really Doing it

Further reading of the spec file found this line:

Release: 1.FC3.13

I simply changed that to

Release: 1.FC2.13

executed the rpmbuild command again, and waited.
Another 90 minutes later, I had properly named, optimized RPMs of Xorg-X11-6.8.2 for Fedora Core 2.
I installed them via rpm -Uvh and everything seems to be working smoothly. And the desktop seems to be much more responsive.

Guess I can wait another coupla months before having to upgrade my system. Heck, could just wait for FC4 to be released.