spmenu-wiki/Using spmenu on macOS.md

# Using spmenu on macOS

**NOTE: This article is out of date and should no longer be considered accurate
information. Read at your own risk.**

spmenu (sort of) supports macOS. This is done through an X11 implementation for
macOS called [XQuartz](https://www.xquartz.org/). It requires some extra effort
however.

## Install Homebrew

Start by installing Homebrew (the package manager) on your Mac. From there run:
`brew install libxft libxinerama xquartz libconfig libx11 freetype`. Make sure
Xquartz is set up and functional before proceeding.

## Editing the buildconf

**NOTE: The following instructions only apply to users of spmenu 1.0 and
greater. Previous versions require a significant amount of work to get
running.**

The buildconf is just a shell script that the build script (build.sh) reads. So
if we want to append any options we simply edit this file. First we need to set
`PREFIX` to `/usr/local` instead of the default `/usr`. This is because Apple
as of macOS 10.15 Catalina no longer allows us to write to `/usr/bin` and
`/usr/share`. This avoids any `Permission denied` errors you may get (yes, even
with sudo)

Now we need to set `pango=false`, `pangoxft=false`, `imlib2=false` and
`openssl=false`. Currently, these features are **not supported** on macOS.
[Should've installed a better operating system, bud.](https://archlinux.org)

## Compiling and installing

Now that we've edited our buildconf, we can simply run `sudo ./build.sh`.