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MactotheMax · Feb 1, 2005, 12:46 PM

Hey guys. I hope this is the right area to post this. If not, mods please move to right area.

Ok, I bought an ibook last Friday night. Let me say that i'm new to mac and to anything to do with unix. I am a quick learner though. Now, I downloaded a program called Xboard. Its a chess client for unix based systems. According to all the documentation, this is supposed to run on Mac OS X with the X11 environment installed. I installed the X11 package from the factory CDs. I opened a terminal and cd'd to the directory of the Xboard download. (It was on my desktop) Once inside that directory, I did ./configure. Its started doing something and then tells me that there are no gcc compilers in the path. I dont understand what this means. Is there anyone here that can help me get this installed??

MactotheMax · Feb 1, 2005, 01:39 PM

Ok. I reinstalled the X packages and all and was able to get it to configure.

i did ./configure and it went through that process. I then did 'make' and it went through that process. One set of instructions says that all I'm supposed to do but I cant figure out how to 'run' the program. Another set of instructions tells me that i'm supposed to go one step further and do 'make install' which i tried and it doesnt work. How do I run the program now?? What else am I supposed to do??

MactotheMax · Feb 1, 2005, 02:39 PM

ok. let me update this. I think the problem is that x11 isnt installed correctly. I'm apparently supposed to have this running when I do ./xboard to start the program. However, i cannot find X11.app on my computer anywhere. I've done command - find to look for that file and it doesnt exist. I've installed the x11 software like 5 times and each time it tells me that it installed correctly. Any ideas?

[APi]TheMan · Feb 2, 2005, 12:05 AM

Originally posted by MactotheMax:
ok. let me update this. I think the problem is that x11 isnt installed correctly. I'm apparently supposed to have this running when I do ./xboard to start the program. However, i cannot find X11.app on my computer anywhere. I've done command - find to look for that file and it doesnt exist. I've installed the x11 software like 5 times and each time it tells me that it installed correctly. Any ideas?

X11 should be installed in the Utilities folder. That is, /Applications/Utilities/X11.app. Make sure that it is, indeed, not there, and then we can try to troubleshoot your Developer Tools installer.

MactotheMax · Feb 2, 2005, 08:35 AM

I was able, with the help of Apple, to determine that X11 wasnt installing correctly. They downloaded to me a fresh copy of my install cds and I was able to get it installed. Guess there was something wrong with the install files on the cds. Thanks for the input.

[APi]TheMan · 03:08 PM

Originally posted by MactotheMax:
I was able, with the help of Apple, to determine that X11 wasnt installing correctly. They downloaded to me a fresh copy of my install cds and I was able to get it installed. Guess there was something wrong with the install files on the cds. Thanks for the input.

So they had you go to the Apple Developer Connection website, no? In any case, I'm glad you got it working.

Now test out some other fun X11 programs like xeyes, xcalc, and xclock. You may or may not know this, but you have a multitude of Linux/Unix tools at your fingertips, many of which use X11 to do many useful things outside of the commandline. Check out fink; it's a package management system that will download, configure, compile, and install bunches of *nix tools very easily.