Too early to be worried...
So, the facts are:
- Xquartz is the open source X11-compatible window server for Mac OS X
- Xquartz is maintained by Apple-employed developers. It's an Apple-sponsored open source project.
- The 'X11' app bundled with various OS X releases has historically been a snapshot of the Xquartz code, renamed and integrated with the Mac OS X release.
- There was some extra 'glue' which made the Xquartz snapshot known as X11.app behave extra nice with OS X ($DISPLAY setting, etc)
So the actual change in Mountain Lion is that:
- Apple will no longer be bundling re-labelled Xquartz versions with OS X.
- OS X will instead prompt the user to download Xquartz when an X11-dependent application runs.
Now, clearly there's been a shift in responsibility here. The OS X team no longer take responsibility for integrating Xquartz (branded 'X11') into OS X major releases.
Rather, the Xquartz team (
still Apple employees, remember) need to build up their process for producing releases independently of the OS X team. This is where the 'glue's got lost. Whatever OS X used to do for X11.app/Xquartz, Xquartz is now going to have to do for itself. From their point of view, it's almost certainly too early to start down that road since ML is still such a moving target. Hence the lack of integration in the present DP state.
I'm failing to see the malice, neglect or otherwise here. Rather, it's letting the Xquartz team control their schedule and deliver their updates independently of OS X without having to rely on people seeking out and installing Xquartz on their own.
Bear in mind also that the third-party developers will also take a little bit to adjust. They've been used to being able to test against 'the X11 that comes with <OSX_VERSION>. Instead, they'll need to test against the current release of Xquartz.
We're only about 24hrs into Mountain Lion's public history... so let's give everyone involved a chance to sort things out.