Xmonad/Using xmonad on Apple OSX

From HaskellWiki
< Xmonad
Revision as of 18:36, 16 February 2008 by Benmos (talk | contribs) (Added Config Problem notes)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

xmonad runs well on Apple OSX machines, and needs little work to be useful. This page collects advice and information on using xmonad successfully with OSX.

  • Apple OSX

If you're using xmonad on a mac, add details about your configuration here!


Some instructions for using XMonad:

1. Build and install XMonad like you would any other Haskell library.

2. do the following on the Terminal: 

    $ cp /private/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
    $ chmod +w ~/.xinitrc
    $ vim ~/.xinitrc 
    #comment out the line 'exec quartz-wm' and add PATH-TO-XMONAD/xmonad after it.

3. Open X11. XMonad should be running now.


XMonad is not very usable on OS X, as most apps are Cocoa or Carbon apps, meaning they don't run under Apple's X11.app and thus not within XMonad.

You could, however, probably install GTK+, WxWidgets, Qt... and rebuild many apps like Firefox, Emacs... to use X11.


Potential Configuration Problems

You may have problems with configuring XMonad under OSX - if you see the "error detected while loading xmonad configuration" error message but with no error output, it could be because the PATH inherited by XMonad doesn't include ghc (eg by default it won't include /usr/local/bin).

Possible solutions:

1. http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12382

2. http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=14279

3. Or just hardwire the path into xmonad itself - change "ghc" -> "/usr/local/bin/ghc" (or whatever) in Core.hs before building XMonad.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.haskell.org/index.php?title=Xmonad/Using_xmonad_on_Apple_OSX&oldid=19178"