Some confusion about XFree86

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 1, 2008, at 18:03, Tabitha McNerney wrote:

> On 1/1/08, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Jan 1, 2008, at 07:35, Tabitha McNerney wrote:
>>
>> > Its been a while since I've made a bunch of MacPorts, but I have an
>> > Xserve running Leopard Server 10.5.1 and wanted to give it a try
>> > with MacPorts 1.6.0.
>> >
>> > I had problems building XFree86 (I tried to install with the -d
>> > debug option and have saved the output in case it might be useful
>> > to submit to the Trac bug reporting system). Before submitting
>> > anything, I started poking around a bit, looking at some of the
>> > more recent posts about Leopard and XFree86 on the MacPorts mailing
>> > list and also noticing that Apple's X11 app is now based on X.org.
>> >
>> > I noticed that there are also some new (well, new since I last
>> > tried MacPorts 1.5.0 on a Tiger Server system in August of 2007),
>> > ports that seem to be related to X, such as xorg-util-macros and
>> > xorg-xproto (but even these newish ports still depend on XFree86).
>> >
>> > I'm wondering if anyone can provide a little clearer lay of the
>> > land / big picture to help me fill in the missing pieces (with
>> > apologies if there is a lot more details interwoven into these mail
>> > threads). Are there any recommended paths to take with regard to
>> > X11 app or building XFree86 port? Has anyone else had failure
>> > building XFree86 on Leopard Server 10.5.1 or Leopard 10.5.1?
>>
>> I guess the first question is: why do you want to build XFree86?
>> Ports that depend on XFree86 only do so in the event that you have
>> not installed Apple X11. MacPorts installation documents state that
>> you must install Apple X11. Therefore, nobody should need to install
>> the XFree86 port, and in fact, you cannot do so if Apple X11 is
>> already installed, which it is now by default on Leopard.
>
> Ryan, this is, in hindsight, a good question. I had, by habit in  
> the past, been building the Mac(Darwin) Port, XFree86, mostly  
> because IIRC the Apple X11 app was historically not open source  
> totally and I was concerned about moving to a possible proprietary  
> application. But, based on what I've read yesterday, I guess X11  
> from Apple has been re-based on X.org now so I can see how that  
> would, in essence, deprecate the need to build XFree86.
>
> With that being said, so if XFree86 is pretty much no longer needed  
> in lieu of the changes to Apple's X11 app on Leopard, then what  
> about some of the X Windows ports such as wireshark? Checking out  
> the dependencies for wireshark, I can trace its dependencies to the  
> XFree86 port:
>
> $ ports deps wireshark
> wireshark has library dependencies on:
>         glib2
>         gtk2
>         openssl
>         libpcap
>         zlib
>
> ...
>
> $ port deps gtk2
> gtk2 has library dependencies on:
>         cairo
>         fontconfig
>         freetype
>         glib2
>         jpeg
>         tiff
>         libiconv
>         libpng
>         atk
>         pango
>         gettext
>         render
>         zlib
>         xrender
>         xorg
>
> ...
>
> $ port deps pango
>         glib2
>         XFree86
>         Xft2
>         cairo
>         fontconfig
>
>
> Thanks for the clearing some of my confusion.

As I explained, "Ports that depend on XFree86 only do so in the event  
that you have not installed Apple X11." To take your example of  
pango, look at how the dependency is defined in the pango portfile:

depends_lib \
...
         lib:libX11.6:XFree86 \

That means: it depends on the library libX11.6, and if that library  
does not exist, then install it via the XFree86 port. libX11.6 will  
already exist on your system if Apple X11 is installed, therefore the  
XFree86 port will not be installed.