Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks, Second Edition

X11-Based Applications and Libraries

Fink (see Chapter 11) can be used to install many X11-based applications, such as the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), xfig/transfig, ImageMagick, nedit, and more. Since Fink understands dependencies, installing some of these applications causes Fink to first install several other packages. For example, since the text editor nedit depends on Motif libraries, Fink will first install lesstif. (This also gives you the Motif window manager, mwm.) Similarly, when you install the GIMP via Fink, you will also install the packages for GNOME, GTK+, and glib.

You can also use Fink to install libraries directly. For example:

$ fink install qt

will install the X11-based Qt libraries.

Building X11-Based Applications and Libraries

If you cannot find binaries for X11-based applications, or prefer to build the applications yourself, many tools are available to do so. When you install the Xcode Tools, make sure you install the optional X11SDK, which contains development tools and header files for building X11-based applications. If you didn’t install X11SDK when you first installed Xcode, you can still install it from the Xcode CD.

The process of building software usually begins with generating one or more makefile s customized to your system. For X11 applications, there are two popular methods for generating makefiles:

• You can use a configure script, as described earlier in this chapter.

• The other popular method for generating makefiles involves ...