Problem installing ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 3, 2007, at 01:01, Skip Evans wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> Well, ok, that might work too. Though Apple's X11 is really the  
>> easiest, the fastest and IMHO the best way to go.
> I got XFree86 loaded and I guess sort of working, but it seems  
> pretty awkard. I apparently had to start XDarwin separately, which  
> then opened three or four terminals right away, and then a code  
> editor like Bluefish took forever to open, leaving all these  
> terminals open...
>
> ...yuck.
>
> Would Apple's X11 be better than this, as you say above? If it is  
> faster than I'll go ahead and move XFfree86 aside and get X11 off  
> my install disks.

With Apple's X11, you still have to open an app (X11.app in this  
case) before you can use X11 software. Or, from the normal (non-X)  
Terminal, you can type "open-x11 foo" to open X11.app and then open  
foo within it. That's on Tiger; Leopard may be different.

I don't use Bluefish or really any other X software so I can't speak  
to its performance.

I did notice, when using XFree86 and XDarwin once, all the  
unrequested xterms it opened, the weird window frames it used, the  
weird cursor it showed, the unfamiliar (to a Mac user) focus-follows- 
mouse behavior, and various other weirdisms which aren't present with  
Apple's X11.

If you want to now switch to Apple's X11, you'll have to "sudo port - 
f uninstall XFree86", and once you install Apple's X11User.pkg (from  
Mac OS X DVD) and X11SDK.pkg (from Xcode disk image), you'll probably  
also have to rebuild all ports that linked against the X libraries  
("sudo port -ncuf upgrade foo" where foo is one such port; repeat for  
all such ports). If you don't know which ports those are, just  
reinstall them as you start encountering error messages about  
mismatched library versions.