[TUHS] Setting up an X Development Environment for Mac OS

[Will Senn]

All,

If you think unix ends without x, just move along, nothing to see here. 
Otherwise, I thought I would share the subject of my latest post and a 
link with those of you interested in such things.

Recently, I've been tooling around trying to wrap my head around x 
windows and wanted to give programming it a shot at the xlib level... on 
my mac, if possible. So, I bought a copy of Adrian Nye's Xlib 
Programming Manual for Version 11 R4/R5, aka Volume One of The 
Definitive Guides to the X Window System, published, get this... 30+ 
years ago, in 1992 :) and started reading like a madman. As usual, this 
was an example of great technical writing from the prior millenium, 
something rarely found today.

Anyway, I hunted up the source code examples as published, unpacked 
them, did a few environmental things to my mac, and built my first xlib 
application from that source. A few tweaks to my XQuartz configuration 
and I was running the application in twm on my mac, with a root window.

To read about it and see it in all of its glory, check it out here:

https://decuser.github.io/operating-systems/mojave/x-windows/2023/01/24/x-windows-dev-on-mac.html

The same sort of setup works with Linux, FreeBSD, or my latest 
environment DragonFly BSD. It's not the environment that I find 
interesting, but rather the X Window System itself, but this is my way 
of entering into that world. If you are interested in running X Windows, 
not as an integrated system on your mac (where x apps run in aqua 
windows), but with a 'regular' window manager, and you haven't figured 
out how, this is one way.

On the provocateur front - is X part of unix? I mean this in oh so many 
nuanced ways, so read into it as you will. I would contend, torpedoes be 
damned, that it is :).

Will
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