App on MAC - and Pango

[richard boaz <ivor boaz gmail com>]

Hello,

I'm attempting to get my GTK-based app packaged for delivery to MAC
platforms.  Everything is going okay except for one last
implementation issue.

The current solution (not one I'm absolutely committed to, btw):
  1)  Install GTK+-2 using macports onto build machine.
  2)  Build the app using directories and libraries as created in 1.
  3)  Package the app, extracting all necessary libraries from step 1
and placing into an app-specific lib directory
  4)  Set necessary environment variables to have app find the
libraries re-located in step 3 (e.g., DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, plus others).

This all works fine when app is installed onto a machine that has only
X11 installed, i.e., it's as "naked" as possible where a GTK app is
concerned.  The problem relates to execution of the app after
installation, resulting in the following Pango initiation failure
message:

Pango-CRITICAL **: No modules found:
No builtin or dynamically loaded modules were found.
PangoFc will not work correctly.
This probably means there was an error in the creation of:
'/opt/local/etc/pango/pango.modules'
You should create this file by running:
pango-querymodules > '/opt/local/etc/pango/pango.modules'

A nice helpful message, except that anything and everything I do
cannot make it go away.  At this point I'm simply trying to identify
what exactly constitutes a working install in order to define the
necessary steps the installer should take.  What I've attempted to get
this to work:

  1)  followed the instructions, creating the undesired directory
structure /opt/local/etc/pango...  (like i said, just want to get a
working example going at this point)
  2)  executed fc-cache
  3)  created my own pangorc file, pointing to the pango modules
directory that is located in my app-specific lib directory, executing
pango-querymodules again to regenerate the pango.modules file.
  4)  a google-find indicated that a reboot post-install might be in
order, so that was also done.

To no avail.  There are a few strange things going on here that confuse me:

  1)  google returns little to no information regarding this
particular problem, an indication that something very fundamental is
going on.
  2)  I also don't find any advice, in general, re: how Pango should
be packaged and configured when wanting to package it completely
within an app itself.

I made a query about MAC installs a while ago and got back advice to
use gtk-osx.  I investigated this solution but ulitmately rejected it
since I wasn't happy with the drawing results of the Quartz backend,
GDK and Cairo are better for my purposes, hence my attempt at
installing all necessary libraries/modules/etc. to support an X11
backend solution.

But I can't get past this hiccup.

Version Info:
MACOS:  10.6
GTK+:      a very recent version available from macports (not sure the
precise version number, no direct access to the install machine at the
moment).

So my questions:

  1)  What must I do to at least get the machine configured to have
the Pango modules recognized and used properly by my app?
  2)  More generally, what are the recommendations for packaging and
installation tasks necessary to have Pango locally installed specific
to the app's installation directory.

Any pointers extremely appreciated, whether as advice or links
(perhaps my various google search attempts were not creative enough).

cheers,

richard