Re: Gtk on MAC OS X

[Marius Schamschula <mschamschula gmail com>]

Calvin,

Building a Mac applications is rather different than building a *NIX executable. I personally keep things simple by building in the regular *NIX  manner into /usr/local. If you continue to have have problems building gtk+ see my build at <
http://www.hmug.org/pub/MacOS_X/X/Libraries/Graphics/gtk+2/> to see all the prerequisites I needed for the build.

If you build Apple style, you can't count on a given installation path, since users may drag your .app just about anywhere. However, Darwin style dynamic libaries (do an otool -L, 
a.k.a. ldd on Linux) do include an absolute path (which can be later edited to be a relative path). I have seen a number of application builds that have managed to get around this issue.

One example of what you are interested in may be found at <
http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/>. This is a self contained .app version of the Gimp, with all of gtk+, etc. included.

Regardless how you install the app, until there is a completed Cocao front end for gtk+, the user will have to install X11 on their Mac.

On 2/11/06, Calvin Ellis <kyndig gmail com> wrote:

Hell all -

I am working on a software program that uses gtk and operates on linux and windows. I am now working on the port to the MAC OS X tiger version. I'm following the instructions at the mac os x for gtk site ( http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Gtk_Mac_OS_X/Build_Instructions ).  While I'm having troubles getting it to compile on the MAC, I'm sure a little persistance will see it operating properly in a few days.

My question to the gtk developers is what would be the best approach as to distributing software on the MAC platform that requires gtk? After browsing the list archives; I have reviewed the Fink and Port sites for OpenSource projects on MAC - and while they do provide a good framework that is much closer to standard linux package distribution, I want to target the end desktop user with a point/click application installer - much like Firefox on MAC. Fink and Port is targeted mostly to the geekier side of the desktop users - and would be comparable to distributing the software on windows with a Cygwin binding. On the windows distrubtion - I ended up supplying gtk 2.8.x within the same directory as the application; which allowed it to operate the software using Gtk and not requiring it to be globally installed on windows ( this had to be done - as gtk 2.8 kept breaking my Gaim on windows install )

While compiling Cairo - it is erroring that I am not supplying the window server for the software. What does gtk on MAC operate under ? Is it the X11 server - and I'd be required to supply this as well to provide a one-bundle point/click application - or are there other documentations and points that I might not have read about yet? It would be highly preferable for a standard gtk-installer much like Gaim windows version uses - but created for MAC. Am I looking at this problem in the wrong manner? And what about compiling gtk directly into the software program - or simply supplying the compiled gtk shared objects within the distro?

Thank you for any recomendations,
Calvin

-- 
Marius