spmenu-wiki/pages/Using spmenu on macOS.md

Using spmenu on macOS

NOTE: This article features information that may not apply to newer spmenu versions. An update to this article needs to be made.

spmenu (sort of) supports macOS. This is done through an X11 implementation for macOS called XQuartz. 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.

Compiling and installing

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

Notes

• Image support and Pango markup will not work, because spmenu was not compiled with those. It is possible to compile spmenu with support for this but it is not easy for the beginner, for various reasons.
• spmenu_run is non-functional, and it will warn you about this during runtime on 1.0 and greater.
• Profile menu does not work, it does absolutely nothing.