X11 forwarding not working with a Remote Login

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, but this should work and I'm probably not the only person who's had this problem. And I don't like giving up :)

Anyway, after noodling on this overnight, I think the next step is to actually debug the problem, I'm a programmer. On first blush I believe I should enable debugging in the ssh server. I tried once before and apparently I need to modify `/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.openssh.ssh-agent.plist`. But when I try to modify it with `sudo vi xxx` it can't be opened for writing and also where can I find what are the fields I need to modify to enable logging.

So I did erase and reinstall again last night and this morning finished setting up. The only other changes to the system was to change the mouse to left handed, turn off "Natural scrolling" and added Applications and Downloads to the Dock.

I then executed `mkdir -p ~/prgs/clones`, `cd ~/prgs/clones` and `git clone git://ozlabs.org/~paulus/gitk` which asked me to install the command line tools I said yes.

I then built gitk:

wink@Winks-iMac-Pro gitk % make
    * new Tcl/Tk interpreter location
    GEN gitk-wish
Generating catalog po/bg.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/bg.po -l bg -d po/
317 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/ca.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/ca.po -l ca -d po/
307 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/de.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/de.po -l de -d po/
307 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/es.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/es.po -l es -d po/
184 translated messages, 46 fuzzy ones, 77 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/fr.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/fr.po -l fr -d po/
311 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/hu.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/hu.po -l hu -d po/
277 translated messages, 18 fuzzy ones, 12 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/it.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/it.po -l it -d po/
274 translated messages, 17 fuzzy ones, 16 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/ja.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/ja.po -l ja -d po/
311 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/pt_br.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/pt_br.po -l pt_br -d po/
279 translated messages, 17 fuzzy ones, 12 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/pt_pt.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/pt_pt.po -l pt_pt -d po/
311 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/ru.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/ru.po -l ru -d po/
317 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/sv.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/sv.po -l sv -d po/
311 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/vi.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/vi.po -l vi -d po/
307 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.
Generating catalog po/zh_cn.msg
tclsh po/po2msg.sh --statistics --tcl po/zh_cn.po -l zh_cn -d po/
317 translated messages, 0 fuzzy ones, 0 untranslated ones.

And then executed `./gitk .` and it printed this deprecated warning:

wink@Winks-iMac-Pro gitk % ./gitk .
DEPRECATION WARNING: The system version of Tk is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Please don't rely on it. Set TK_SILENCE_DEPRECATION=1 to suppress this warning.

And the window that pops up has "black" panes with no data:

I then close the window and on the Terminal it prints:

Error in startup script: invalid command name ".bar.view"
    while executing
".bar.view add radiobutton -label $viewname($n)  -command [list showview $n] -variable selectedview -value $n"
    (procedure "addviewmenu" line 4)
    invoked from within
"addviewmenu 1"
    invoked from within
"if {$cmdline_files ne {} || $revtreeargs ne {} || $revtreeargscmd ne {}} {
    # create a view for the files/dirs specified on the command line
    se..."
    (file "./gitk" line 12669)
wink@Winks-iMac-Pro gitk % 

@etresoft, any possibility you could try clone, compile and run gitk on your system to see if you have different behavior?

I'm a programmer too. I've even work on different operating system kernels. That does not mean I want to play around with X11 based code 😱

I agree I've never written an X11 based app, and don't really want to, but git, git-gui and gitk are widely used tools and being able to use them one technique across systems and "remotely" is nice to have. I've used VNC previously, but as I recall it was slow especially when accessing via slow connections, but I might have to reconsider.

It seems to me Apple's not interested in making their systems compatible with other environments except when it's "mandatory". And making cross-platform developer life easy isn't a priority.

I looked at TigerVNC and it seems only a source code license is available for macOS and compiling stuff on Mac has been a really poor experience! RealVNC seems fairly expensive and on top of that the lower cost variants only support cloud connections. It seems weird to have my data go through the cloud when the computer is in my garage or right next to me.

Currently the main things I want to be able to do is login via command line and use a few "gui" apps like git-gui, gitk and periodically I use meld.

Actually, what "native" git-gui, gitk and meld are available on macOS?

Answering my own question, maybe using vscode. I'm learning rust and I find vscode in vi mode quite good. It supports commits via the GUI and IIRC it can do gitk and meld diffing too. But to date I just been using git-gui,gitk,meld as they are more familiar, your thoughts?

Txs for trying seems to show it's not just me!

But, installing them homebrew both git-gui and gitk do work locally, they just don't work on an when an ssh client on a Linux box connects to a ssh server on Mac. I've duplicated that behavior with the gitk I compiled without homebrew. So that is a configuration or openssh problem. We'll see if I can figure it out :)

Thanks for the help!

So I shouldn't expect it to work, that's sad. But since XQuartz and git-gui and gitk work locally and xclock works locally and remotely I do expect git-gui and gitk to work remotely. It seems I might be the only person in the world who cares, but I'm guessing it can be fixed so I'm going to try. Hopefully you or others will continue to provide help, but if not I totally understand and appreciate the help everyone has provided!!

Cheers

My Linux box is my primary work station and I'd like to have the capability to remotely log into my mac. I believe there is nothing keeping the mac running macos from being remotely operated using ssh and X11 and so I'm going to see if I can get it working.

I appreciate the help and advice you and others have given, I hope it continues.

I'll probably be posting to other topics specific to new issues I run into, so I'll probably only be answering questions or responding to comments people might. At a minimum I'll create one more post with the results of my journey.

Thanks,

Wink