Anyone running X11 apps on Mojave?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 12, 2018, at 03:02, Tabitha McNerney wrote:

> I just installed XQuartz 2.7.11 today on a fresh Mac running Mojave 10.14.2. I installed XQuartz from the XQuartz.pkg found in the disk image (dmg) file on the XQuartz support site: https://www.xquartz.org/
> 
> I didn't have any problems installing and then later running XQuartz. However, on Mojave, there was an interesting alert panel which appeared during the pkg installation process which I have not seen on previous versions of macOS when installing XQuartz, which alert panel with two buttons, one which stated "Don't Allow" and the other stated "OK", and text which stated the following:
> 
> "Installer.app" wants access to control "System Events.app". Allowing control will provide access to documents and data in "System Events.app", and to perform actions within that app. 
> 
> I didn't know what to do so I waited. There must have been a timeout because the panel disappeared on its own without me making a selection. The package installer process then finished on its own and stated XQuartz had been installed successfully. I was then able to run XQuartz without any issues. Interestingly, when I now run System Preferences and select Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Automation there is an entry for "Installer.app" and underneath a check box next to "System Events.app". The check box is unchecked. I gather this all has something to do with changes to Mojave's security and privacy settings. Has anyone else seen this with or without XQuartz involved? If so, any ideas of what this means? 

The XQuartz.pkg installer's postinstall script uses System Events to display a dialog:


    /usr/bin/osascript <<EOF
        tell application "System Events"
            activate
            display dialog "You will need to log out and log back in to make XQuartz your default X11 server." buttons {"OK"}
        end tell


If you don't allow the installer to control System Events, then it cannot display that dialog for you.

I guess previous versions of macOS didn't restrict scripting access in this way and just always allowed it. Probably a good thing for security that the OS now warns you about this, but the installer was built 2 years ago, so the developer couldn't have anticipated that macOS would be changed in this way.

This has nothing to do with MacPorts. You could report the issue to the developer of XQuartz:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi