[Xquartz-dev] XQuartz-2.8.0_beta1

[Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia]

TL;DR: https://www.xquartz.org/releases/XQuartz-2.8.0_beta1.html

Hey folks,

It's been quite a while since the last time we had a release, and a lot has happened in the mean time.  I've been hard at work taking care of my two new children and helping to bring macOS to Apple Silicon, which left not much time to help out with X11.

I always had it as a goal to put out a release with native Apple Silicon support, and here it is!  For the past ~month, I've been silently putting out alpha builds of a new build of XQuartz, and I think I've worked through most of the issues.  Special thanks to everyone who noticed and was willing to try it at report back bugs!

This release is built with a brand new build system (cf https://github.com/xquartz/xquartz) based on MacPorts + git submodules + our shell script.  Older builds required either a lot of hand-holding or Apple Internal tools, so this will hopefully be a step towards making it easier for others to drive future releases of XQuartz.  If that is something you'd be interested in, please let me know.

Some notes to call out:

1. The post-install script doesn't delete this old file.  Please do so manually:
    sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist
    https://github.com/XQuartz/XQuartz/issues/36

2. The installer is now notarized with the notarization stapled to the disk image (meaning it can be installed without an internet connection active).

3. We now require macOS 10.9 or later.  Sorry to anyone still on 10.6 through 10.8.  If you want modern XQuartz, I suggest using MacPorts to install it.

4. i386 and multiple deprecated / leaf libraries have been removed.  If you have need for any of these for bin-combat reasons, please reach out, and I'll see about adding them back in.  Check out the release notes page for more details.

Thanks,
Jeremy