# Xpce on mac

**URL:** <https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/xpce-on-mac/3642>\
**Category:** Installing\
**Tags:** macos\
**Created:** [February 23, 2021, 1:06am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/xpce-on-mac/3642 "2021-02-23T01:06:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![Boris](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/swi-prolog.discourse.group/boris/32/7486_2.png) [@Boris](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/Boris)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 7:02am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/xpce-on-mac/3642/11 "2021-02-28T07:02:26Z")

</div>

I tried to see how the whole thing works on my Mac, and it turns out it doesn’t work too well.

First, what works:

I am able to compile from source after installing all dependencies, including gcc, using homebrew. I am able to tell cmake to do what I mean, like this, from inside the `build` directory (see [SWI-Prolog -- Installation on Linux, \*BSD (Unix)](https://www.swi-prolog.org/build/unix.html)):

```prolog
cmake -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/gcc \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/g++ \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME"/bin/swipl \
      -DSWIPL_PACKAGES_JAVA=OFF \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -G Ninja ..

```

However, _now_, when I start the graphical editor or debugger, I am getting never seen before warnings and the text is somehow very wide (every character is followed by about two white spaces?).

```prolog
?- edit(aggregate_all/3).
true.

?- XPCE Xt warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C
Fontconfig warning: ignoring UTF-8: not a valid region tag

```

Some googling tells me that _many_ projects suffer from similar issues. I can’t be now bothered to figure out how to fix it ☹

This is annoying because I had managed to get it to work after some effort, but now it is broken. I suspect the MacOS upgrades.

Altogether the development experience on a (pretty modern) Mac has been crap. Every time the OS **forcefully** upgrades itself (every other week), a lot of stuff is broken (like, git doesn’t work) and I need to do this one trick:

```prolog
xcode-select --install

```

I won’t complain more, but depending on what you are doing, it might indeed be easier to just do your development on a developer-friendly OS 🙂

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_[View the full topic](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/xpce-on-mac/3642)._