Re: [Gtk-osx-users] Spice modulesets

[John Ralls <jralls ceridwen us>]

On Apr 26, 2011, at 5:28 AM, Cliff Sharp wrote:

> Good suggestions.
> 
> My plan is to get Spice Client working on OSX with as little changes as possible for Phase One. That means using Gtk and X11 as it is now in Spice Client since both of these already work on OSX. In other words, just to port it to Darwin. For this phase I would not Cocoa'ize it. I am ASSUMING since OSX is Unix (Darwin) under the covers this would not be that difficult - of course I don't know how true or not this is.
> 
> Then Phase Two would be to replace/port Gtk/X11, sound, and whatever else to work on OSX. Using OpenGL, Core Audio, etc - Cocoa'ize it.
> 
> Phase Three would be to then get Phase Two working on iOS.
> 
> To date I have most of the Spice dependent libraries at least building under Darwin. I am having more difficulty getting the alsa-lib software building on Darwin.
> 
> I have not found anyone working on a Cocoa version of Spice Client. Can you let me know who these people might be? Thanks 
> 
> What do you think?
> 

Here's where I found the indication of an OSX port: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/spice-devel/2010-June/000583.html

If you want to do an X11 build, then you do *not* want gtk-osx, which does a quartz build of Gtk+. As I'm sure you know, OSX does support X11, so your plan will work fine once you get past the audio issues. You might check MacPorts and Fink to see what they've done about audio. Yes, Darwin is Unix, but it's a Mach microkernel wrapped with NetBSD libraries, a very different design from Linux which is a gargantuan kernel that does everything. The main issue in your case is that sound is part of the kernel in Linux, but not in Darwin and that there is no standard sound API for Unix. I know that problem has been solved, because I've seen claims of having GStreamer working on OSX (not working particularly well, mind you, but working).

In your place I would skip Phase One. I don't think that there's any benefit to that exercise.

Regards,
John Ralls