3. Getting Started

Following are instructions for building and running your own copy of XFree86. The procedure for getting your X server up and running on Darwin and Mac OS X are very similar, but it is actually somewhat more difficult on Mac OS X. Where there are differences I have noted them below. Both Mac OS X Developers' Preview 4 and Mac OS X Public Beta are covered. Note that to build XFree86 for yourself on Mac OS X Beta, you will need to have the Developers' Tools. If you did not receive these as a member of ADC, they are available for download from the Apple Developer Connection.

If you want to save some time, you can use the precompiled binaries provided by the XFree86 server at ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.3/binaries/Darwin/. Follow the instructions in the Install document to install it.

This will create two new directory trees, /usr/X11R6 and /private/etc/X11. If you have the developers' tools, you may have to run ranlib on all the libraries in /usr/X11R6/lib/* before trying to build other X applications.

If you get the precompiled binaries you can skip ahead to the section on running X windows

On the other hand, if you want to build things yourself from scratch, follow the directions below.

If you want to recompile the X server on Mac OS X, you will have to make the header files as described below.

3.1. Get the Code

The first thing you need to do is to get the source code from the XFree86 project.

• Setup CVS: Both Darwin and Mac OS X include CVS (Concurrent Versions System), which is an easy way to download and keep up to date with open source code released by XFree86 and others. You do have to setup CVS properly, however, to tell it where to look. Follow the instructions here on how to do this either via ssh or via the cvs pserver.
• Now make a directory in some convenient place which will serve as your top level directory for you open source development efforts. I am going to call this directory sandbox/ in the following discussions and you could put this directory, for example, in ~/sandbox/.
• From the command line type:

  cd sandbox
  cvs checkout xc
  

  Wait for all the files to complete downloading.

3.2. Make Header Files for Mac OS X

These next steps are not necessary if you are building XFree86 on Darwin. Mac OS X Beta or DP4 does not include many of the "in-progress" header files that are needed to successfully build XFree86. The general philosophy is that at any given time, Mac OS X will include only headers files that are "ready for prime time" while Darwin will include a snapshot of Apple's current efforts. So if you have access to a Darwin system, I would suggest using this instead of Mac OS X to build XFree86. If you don't, read the appropriate page below for an outline of what you need to do:

• Mac OS X Public Beta
• Mac OS X Developers' Preview 4

3.3. Build XFree86

Once you have everything ready it is easy to build and install XFree86. From the command line:

cd sandbox/xc
make World >& world.log

(wait for several hours)

su root
make install >& install.log
make install.man >& man.log