3. Getting Started

Following are instructions for building and running your own copy of X11R6.8.1. The procedure for getting your X server up and running on Darwin and Mac OS X are very similar. Where there are differences I have noted them below. Note that to build X11R6.8.1 for yourself on Mac OS X, you need to install the Developers' Tools.

/Applications.

If you get the precompiled binaries you can skip ahead to the section on running the X Window System On the other hand, if you want to build things yourself from scratch, follow the directions below.

3.1. Get the Code

The first thing you need to do is to get the source code from the X.Org Foundation 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 the X.Org Foundation and others. You do have to setup CVS properly, however, to tell it where to look. Follow the X.Org CVS instructions 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. Build X11R6.8.1

Once you have everything ready it is easy to build and install X11R6.8.1. From the command line:

cd sandbox/xc
make World >& world.log

(wait for several hours)

sudo make install >& install.log
sudo make install.man >& man.log