Markus Kamp wrote:
> Hello folks,
> I use fink 0.8.1 on my Tiger powered ibook G4 and have recently  
> switched from Apples X11 to fink's Xorg package. So far, everything  
> works as planned except some minor cosmetic issues in rootless mode  
> (Graphics behind KDE-Menus won't redraw properly in some circumstances).
>  
> The only "real" problem I have now is, that some X11 based programs  
> (okay, games :-) ) which were not installed via fink, com as self  
> contained application bundles, so you're able to double-click 'em in  
> an Aqua environment and X11 should start up. theoretically.
> 
> The bundles I've tried so far, FreeCiv and Scorched3D seem to rely  
> exclusively on Apple's X11, at least for FreeCIV I get an error- 
> message telling me this. What can I do to convince these bundles to  
> work with XDarwin.app? 


Well, these are open source, aren't they? So, simply take the sources, 
replace "X11.app" by "XDarwin.app" at the appropriate place, and 
recompile. Well, at least this would be the recipe if they were *really* 
open source in the sense of the GPL.

<rant>
Unfortunately, many of these app bundles that are distributed for MacOSX 
are in more or less open violation of the GPL, so you can't do what I said.

Sometimes you are lucky and the "X11.app" is only a text string in a 
wrapper script that you can change in the distributed product. This is 
often the case in those app bundles that are basically rip-offs of Fink 
packages, coated with some AppleScript and shell script wrappers and 
stuck into an app frame.

But take the case of freeciv which is quite typical (I haven't looked at 
Scorched3D in detail; does it really require X11.app? It looks like some 
big self-contained binary, no app bundle): They put their stuff under 
the GPL, but the MacOSX binary they distribute on the dmg violates the 
GPL in several respects:

- They don't give you the sources for the main Mach-o binary "Freeciv 
Client" that is started when you open the app and which in turn starts 
X11.app. So you are screwed with your request. They say that the 
binaries are "Based on 2.0.8 source code", whatever that means. The GPL 
would require that they not only give you the exact sources for the 
distributed binaries, in particular for the "Freeciv Client" binary, but 
also the exact scripts and config files they used to compile it.

- They stick several dozen dylibs into the app bundle, most of them 
probably distributed under the GPL. Again, under the GPL they are 
obliged to distribute the sources for the exact versions of these 
libraries and of the scripts and config files they used to compile them. 
Fat chance.
</rant>

This is one of my favorite rants with which I have already annoyed 
several people, among them the author of Gimp.app (successfully; he 
published the scripts to compile the app) and even once the 
quasi-maintainer of our very own FinkCommander.app (not completely 
successfully; you can't build the distributed version from the published 
sources, AFAICT).

> I'm stuck :-)
> Any more hints or ideas what to try next?

Go to the freeciv mailing list and complain.
Or use Fink's freeciv. If it isn't up to date with the latest version, 
nudge the maintainer :-)

-- 
Martin




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