Re: Apple library distrobution
Re: Apple library distrobution
- Subject: Re: Apple library distrobution
- From: Ken Mankoff <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 11:48:21 -0400 (EDT)
Hi List,
Sorry for not being clear/thorough enough. I'll clear up the
environments here, and explain the solution I found (with the help of
this list).
On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Ken Mankoff wrote:
Legal question (unfortunately): Am I allow to distribute X11
libraries? I think the answer is yes, because X11 is open source.
But I don't know the details of this, nor if the Apple X11 libraries
are under a different license, etc.
I am distributing a program that relies on some X11 libraries. We
assume the people installing this do not have, nor want, X11
installed. They say its a liability to provide shell access, and
they remove Terminal also.
The program is hard-linked to the following libraries in:
/usr/X11R6/lib/
libGL.1.dylib -> libGL.1.2.dylib
libICE.6.dylib -> libICE.6.3.dylib
libSM.6.dylib -> libSM.6.0.dylib
libX11.6.dylib -> libX11.6.2.dylib
libXext.6.dylib -> libXext.6.4.dylib
libXp.6.dylib -> libXp.6.2.dylib
libXpm.4.dylib -> libXpm.4.11.dylib
libXt.6.dylib -> libXt.6.0.dylib
I would like to have my installer install these programs. Is this
acceptable? If yes, great. If not, do I need to talk to someone in
the X consortium, or someone at Apple?
1) I am authoring program A, which is written in language X and will
run on both Mac and Windows. I do not have a choice about language X.
But so far, neither A nor X are relevant to my problem.
2) A will be the frontend, and will call program B as a backend. I
have a choice about program B, but I want to use it as it cuts
development time by an order of magnitude (6 months -> 6 weeks).
* B is distributed to me in binary form.
* I will re-distributed it with our installer to the enduser.
* I cannot modify B.
* B links the X11 libraries.
* B does not require an X display, or X11, just the libs.
3) Some of our clients will not have X11 installed, and will not
install it. Some of our clients will have X11 installed
4) As people in this thread pointed out, some clients will start with
X11 and remove it, others will start without and install it, and any
other possible permutation will occur. And this might not occur with
just apple X11, but XonX, XFree86, XTools, and other X servers too.
5) None of this is an issue on windows, as both A, B, and X are cross
platform and just work in the windows environment.
Solution:
I built XFree86 on my local machine, transferred the required
libraries to a _local_ library on our test box (no X11 installed), set
LD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH, and everything worked fine.
So, I will
1) Include and install XFree86 libraries that we built ourselves. This
gets us out of any gray legal areas with Apple
2) I will install them in a local directory, not /usr/X11R6/lib
3) I will use LD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH. This way, if they user does
install X11, program B will use the X11 libs as is expected. If they
do not have it, or remove it, it will use the libs we packaged
locally.
I may use LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and not _FALLBACK, so that if the user
installs some strange X program that provides those libs but is
incompatible, my program will still work. Not sure about this yet.
Thanks for the advice/suggestions.
Regards,
Ken Mankoff
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
X11-users mailing list (email@hidden)
This email sent to email@hidden