[Mono-osx] X11 Dependency

[Andreas Färber]

Hi Wade,

> Anyone have some ideas about how the installer should detect  
> whether X11
> is installed or not?

Not really... there should be a receipt of the respective OS X  
installer package somewhere though. The installation location  
supposedly changed between Panther and Tiger so that would not be a  
reliable indicator.

> I think someone mentioned that we should at least notify the user if
> they don't have it installed, or require it..

Please don't require it, I have been getting along quite well without  
it. Especially in order to check that my code runs without X11 I do  
not install it on at least one machine: Apart from SWF & co. and Gtk#  
requiring X11 there's also the Dumbarton-style and Cocoa# style  
approaches, which often don't need X11.

Yet it might be handy to develop against Gtk# even without X11  
installed (e.g. Linux deployment). So maybe instead of requiring or  
notifying you could rather consider turning the Mono.framework  
package into a metapackage (.mpkg) that consists of the core runtime  
and optional packages that the advanced user can deselect? I've  
installed quite a number of installation packages on OS X and never  
encountered such a notification of a missing potential dependency -  
dependencies not essential for *installation* are usually only listed  
in the readme text displayed by the installer.

Andreas