Re: X11 installation by Apple in 10.7 and later ?
Re: X11 installation by Apple in 10.7 and later ?
- Subject: Re: X11 installation by Apple in 10.7 and later ?
- From: Jeremy Huddleston <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:40:02 -0700
On Nov 1, 2011, at 9:19 PM, Phil Race wrote:
>>> Would installing JDK 7 on 10.7 also require/trigger an install of X11R6
>>> from the app store or where ever else ?
>> X11R6 is crazy old. You don't mean that.
> Can you explain in what sense you mean its old ?
The last time we shipped X11R6 was in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). Leopard (10.5) shipped with X11R7.1. Snow Leopard shipped with X11R7.2. Lion shipped with X11R7.6.
>>> OR: is X11R6 part of the "base" OS X distribution, supported along with all the
>>> rest of it and you always get it in the *initial* install on a new 10.7 computer or
>>> from a 10.6 upgrade whether you want it or not ?
>> It is part of base, but the JDK should NOT be relying on it.
>
>
> There's a nuance there I mustn't be getting. Do you mean that only X11 apps should be using
> part of the X11 distribution ?
Yes.
> Why is that so ?
Lion is the only OS release in which you can guarantee the libraries are present. All other releases had X11 as an optional install option (or not at all). Furthermore, the X11 headers and libraries don't follow the correct paradigm to allow building on a newer OS and running on an older one (eg: weak linking newer symbols).
If you build against Lion, you won't be able to run on SL.
This means that X11 apps need to be built against the oldest SDK they want to support, and they must ensure that the user actually installs X11.
For those reasons, I *highly* recommend that you either use the corresponding native APIs or bundle your own freetype.
> There are a few things in the X11 distribution that
> don't necessarily imply you are running X and freetype is maybe the most notable one.
Yeah, libpng and pixman are the other standouts there. Freetype got its start as part of X11 which is why it is in there.
>> I'll go poke people about that. Can you tell me which JDK7 you are referring to? Are you referring to the binary packages from http://jdk7.java.net/macportpreview or some home baked version?
>
>
> Yes, I'm referring to those JDK 7 builds on java.net. This is how OpenJDK works. It uses freetype.
> However on OS X it mostly uses the native Apple ATS APIs with freetype filling in some holes
> that can't fill. Finally I suppose I am people :-).
Yeah, I know you are @oracle "people", but I was referring to @apple Java peeps.
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