bradmontgomery.net

Installing X11 and DarwinPorts

[04.15.2006] [Keywords: Apple, X11, XFree86, Xorg, DarwinPorts, MacPorts]

(Update: DarwinPorts is now known as MacPorts and is available from macports.org)

If you've searched for information on how to get X applications running on OS X, you may have realized that there's little (or no) guidance available. I hope to help address this situation with this article which presents my experience getting several GTK applications installed and running with DarwinPorts.

NOTE: At the time of writing, I'm running OS X Tiger (10.4.x), and anything in this font was typed on the command line

Assumptions

This article assumes that you do not have X11, or Xcode installed yet. If you do, you may have to remove X11. I found great instructions on how to do that in fink's usaage FAQ. I decided to completely uninstall and reinstall Xcode. Luckily, there's a script included on the Tiger DVD that will do the unintall for you. Just open a terminal cd into the /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Xcode Tools/Utilities directory and type: ./uninstall-devtools.pl. The Xcode reinstall is discussed below.

Installation
  1. First of all, you need to have DarwinPorts installed. You can download it from macports.org!
  2. Secondly, I installed XFree86 through DarwinPorts by typing sudo port install XFree86
  3. Then, I deactivated XFree86 by typing sudo port deactivate XFree86 - This step ensures that DarwinPorts will know that X is intsalled.
  4. I then downloaded XCode (version 2.2_8) (note, you may need to create an apple developer account). Once downloaded, I just ran the installed, making sure to also install the X11SDK package. You MUST have this!
  5. Once Xcode and the X11SDK are installed, I installed Apple's X11 which is located on the Tiger DVD. (Just find and double-click X11User.pkg)
  6. That's it! Now install your favorite Open-source gui applications.

I've also written a short article that discusses installing and running ethereal and etherape!

Was this helpful? Let me know!