The pkg.run file includes some helpful documentation including man pages and html formatted pages. In addition, it also includes a utility called nvidia-xconfig which is a command-line utility for managing xorg.conf. After extracting the file, you may wish to review .../usr/share ->/applications which contains a .desktop file for nvidia-settings ->/doc which, aside from the README contains useful guides and copyrights ->/doc/html which has formatted documentation -- very useful ->/doc/man/man1 which contains gzipped man pages for nvidia-installer, settings, and the xconfig program. /usr/bin directory contains the nvidia-xconfig file The source for the xconfig file is at ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-xconfig/nvidia-xconfig-1.0.tgz which could probably be build along the lines of nvidia-settings. Not sure if nvidia-xconfig would run on all platforms the way it is compiled in the .run file. The supplied version appears to be compiled for i386. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.n/a 2. 3. I'll update the ebuild for the doc, but the nvidia-xconfig program may need to become a separate ebuild since not all processor archs will support it in 32 bit i386. Marking as enhancement since new doc is to be included. Not a bug at all.
Created attachment 74181 [details] media-video/nvidia-kernel/nvidia-kernel-1.0.8174-r1.ebuild includes modifications for additional documentation and man page
See bug #114682 for nvidia-xconfig ebuild.
We don't include all of the NVIDIA documentation in the kernel ebuild. Most of it goes in the glx ebuild. The only doc that I think needs adding to the kernel ebuild is Copyrights. I will add html/* to glx. None of the man pages really pertain to either kernel or glx. They will be installed with the appropriate apps.
As a side note: Am I the only one that thinks that breaking each part of NVIDIA into separate ebuilds is becoming a bit confusing. After all, if I'm just a your standard Gentoo user, why should I have to search everywhere to get the whole NVIDIA package installed. Under what circumstances, for instance, would I install nvidia-kernel but not nvidia-glx? Doesn't seem to be any reason to separate them. And why should the little utilities NVIDIA makes (nvidia-settings and nvidia-xconfig) be separate installs? We could download the source and build them all in one ebuild. Just seems to make more sense. Thoughts?
As a user I say I agree with you, it's easier if only one package installs everything.
Yeah, I realized about the man pages and docs after I posted. However, I agree with the others here that there is no need for 4 separate ebuilds for nvidia: kernel, glx, settings, and if accepted, xconfig. I understand why settings is different because the source comes from a different location -- same with xconfig. Only i386 binaries are provided in the pkg.run file. THAT said, however, IMHO, I think it would be quite desirable to include at a minimum kernel and glx together. I can't imagine a scenario where it is required NOT to have Nvidia GLX if you are using the kernel driver. In fact, the nvidia driver won't even provide glx support unless it's own version is installed. As for the other apps, settings, and xconfig, their audience will be smaller, and I can see keeping them separate. But, OTOH, they are very small in size and would add no overhead to system storage and resource requirements. I hope the maintainers will use this thread as a jumping off point to hopefully unify the nvidia ebuilds.
Added docs where appropriate to nvidia-glx-1.0.8174-r1 and nvidia-kernel-1.0.8174-r1. I'll add the docs to nvidia-settings and nvidia-xconfig once I get those updated. I've started a dialog about merging all of these utils into glx. It looks like kernel and glx might remain separate though to minimize build time for new kernel installs.
(In reply to comment #7) snip... > It looks like kernel and glx might remain separate > though to minimize build time for new kernel installs. I thought about this for a while before responding. I am not sure I agree with your premise. Here is why. 1) It is extremely unlikely anyone would install the kernel module and not glx. And, it is impossible to install glx without the kernel module. They go hand in hand and belong together. And honestly, compile time is brief in any event compared to other libraries/drivers/applications. 2) I recognize the difficulty of pulling in -settings or -xconfig since the source for it is not in the package. I'll post this upstream and see if Andy (at nVidia) won't fix that. Having precompiled x86 only binaries for settings in the .run file is sort of silly. Even if the sources remain separate, it is not _that_ big of a deal to grab them. However, all that said, I think the prospect of having only ONE ebuild instead of potentially 4 is appealing. And also consider WHO uses the advanced nVidia drivers. I would suggest mostly power users who probably own something a wee bit more powerful than a 486. :) Compile time is not significant and certainly not lengthy. using an athlon xp2500 oc'ed to 2800, I compute the following: time ebuild nvidia-kernel-1.0.8174-r1.ebuild install real 0m17.835s user 0m10.411s sys 0m2.679s time ebuild nvidia-glx-1.0.8174-r1.ebuild install real 0m12.045s user 0m8.509s sys 0m2.169s Of course, this does not include download time, but that is an inevitable step regardless of how you set this up. I think the above is compelling and I hope you consider unifying all of the nvidia stuff.
