[Gimp-developer] gimp 2.8 on OS X with Python 2.7 and Wacom Pressure sensitivity

[Ryan Krauss <ryanlists gmail com>]

I have recently switched from Ubuntu to Mac and am having some trouble getting GIMP working the way I need.  I use pygimp and a Wacom tablet to create a sort of digital white board when I teach.  I use my pygimp code to correctly number each slide as I lecture so that the slides are useful to the students for review when I am done.  Here is an example if you are curious:

http://www.cs.siue.edu/~rkrauss/450/2013/lectures/03_22_13/index.html

I am using Python 2.7 for scipy, numpy, and other packages installed using homebrew and pip.  I am having a hard time getting GIMP installed in OS X 10.8 that supports both Python 2.7 and pressure sensitivity.  I have tried two approaches.  I downloaded a binary from here:

Download GIMP 2.8 on the gimp.org/downloads page.  It runs natively on OS X (i.e. not using X11) and it works perfectly with pressure sensitivity on my Wacom tablet.  The only problem is that it seems to ship with Python 2.6, which is a bit dated and not compatible with my other Python packages.

I also tried to build and install from source.  I have tried this two ways.  The first was through homebrew.  I am able to compile correctly and it uses Python 2.7, but for reasons I don't understand, it seems to build an X11 version.  Again for reasons I don't understand, pressure sensitivity does not work when I build this way.  The pen and tablet under the extended input configuration are greyed out. They are set correctly, but the settings don't seem to be respected.

I have also tried to just use homebrew to install the dependencies and then build GIMP myself in other directory.  This keeps getting hung up on trying to build a test GTK+ file that fails because it can't find gtk.h.  gtk.h is in a homebrew Cellar folder and I don't seem to be able to point the configure script to it correctly.

So, can someone point me to the best solution.  If a binary of GIMP 2.8 linked to Python 2.7 could easily be made available, that would be great.  If someone can help me build a version of GIMP 2.8 that runs natively using the Python from homebrew, that would also work.  I don't even mind setting up my own thing and compiling outside of homebrew, but I would prefer to avoid installing all the dependencies myself if possible.  I would prefer to have GIMP run natively rather than through X11, but if Python 2.7 and pressure sensitivity both worked, I would be OK with that.

Thanks,

Ryan