WebKit2-GTK: quartz VS XQuartz

[David Evans]

On 5/7/16 4:29 PM, Andrea Giammarchi wrote:
> I understand the combinatory logic of your answer, hence I'm saying quartz variant should be the default. I don't know
> why the X11 version is currently the one, I don't think anyone would visually prefer that these days and I don't know
> who preferred that in the past. GTK3 +quartz and WebKit2-GTK +quartz might be a very useful hard coded exceptions that
> would make developers like me happy to have by default. The alternative is Homebrew or native builds on quarts like the
> GTK mailing list itself is suggesting. So again ... why X11 as default? AFAIK everyone is trying to move away from it
> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well you need to define "everyone."

Again the answer is that webkit2-gtk +x11 is the default because the ports that depend on it build with +x11 by default.
 In addition, not all of these ports will build with a +quartz variant.

In general, the selection of a default variant, if any, is made on a port by port basis by the port's maintainer.  +x11
is not automatically set as the default variant on a global basis. And it's not a political statement that we prefer
+x11 over +quartz.  It's just a matter that it's often the variant that is best supported by upstream developers. At
this point, Quartz support in GTK is minimal at best although improving.  We try to supply +quartz variants when they
work.  Many apps support X11 but not Quartz even when using GTK. Bottom line, more ports work +x11 than work +quartz.

However, if you want to build everything +quartz, there's nothing to stop you from doing so on MacPorts.  Just set a
global +quartz variant in the global variant definition file /opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf. If you find a port
that doesn't work that way, lobby the upstream developers to provide Quartz support.

BTW, concerning wayland, that is definely a work in progress and as far as I know there is no reference implementation
of a Wayland compositor that supports darwin, just as there is no X11 server implementation for darwin that supports
server side compositing. And it appears that there not much support from Apple on the issue. So until that happens
wayland is not an option for darwin. Not likely to occur any time soon, AFAICT.

So if you want to build +quartz, go ahead.  Does that address your issue?