MN> Is the Fink / X-Windows / PGPLOT installation procedure too big MN> of a hassle? I know that can work, and that athena will work MN> too. I also believe that the instructions are simpler for 10.2 MN> than 10.1 (especially with respect to getting perl/Tk to work), MN> but haven't tried this myself. MN> I'm copying this message to the ifeffit mailing list, hoping that MN> someone else may have better answers to these questions. MN> How necessary is a complete binary installer for Mac OSX? I am really glad this issue came up (even if it took me a few days to return home from the sychrotron, unwind, then begin to hack at my piles of email). While I was at NSLS over the last weekend, I made a stab at following the instructions on a iBook running 10.1. Things did not go well for me. I think the real problem was that I was behind a firewall and could not figure out how to coerce fink into doing its thing through a proxy. (Yes, I followed the instructions in the FAQ -- still didn't work. Then I had to get back to my experiment.) I was able to download and install fink without any trouble, but then, as I said, had trouble configuring it for the place I was at. There was the additional problem that owner of the computer was bewildered by the entire concept. He basically understood the notion that Athena depended on other software that had to be installed first, and he basically understood the concept of fink being a download manager, but I doubt that he would be able to find his way from the "download fink" step to the "run athena" step. That's a problem. There is a solution. Fink is just debian's apt-get tidied up for the needs of OSX and the Mac hardware. apt-get is a wonderfully versatile utility. While it is usually run from a modal UI like dselect, it also has a full command-line interface and can be incorporated into a shell script or any programming language with a system call. What's more you can tell apt-get to go fetch its packages from anywhere you want. Typically there are some default repositories from which you normally fetch stuff (that is certainly the case with fink's dselect -- it goes to a place in the sourceforge universe where packages for OSX live). However, you can tell apt-get to explicitly fetch packages from any place on the web. That's the key. Here is my proposal: 1. One figures out the minimal set of packages (i.e. the x-windows stuff and so on) that are needed on the system before starting with ifeffit. Presumably there are binary packages for these. 2. Ifeffit, PGPLOT, and the GUIs (mine, Matt's, Sam's) should be compiled for 10.1, 10.2 and any other versions commonly lurking out there. These should be packaged into binary .debs. 3. The Ifeffit etc binary .debs should be housed on a known location on the web, such as the Ifeffit web site. 4. A script gets written that, assuming fink has been installed, uses apt-get directly to fetch the necessary files from the standard places, then fetches Ifeffit, etc from its repository. This reduces the installation instructions to three steps: 1. connect to the web 2. download and install fink 3. run (double click on?) a script that runs apt-get to install a pre-defined set of binary .debs Except for the firewall issue, that should be simple enough even for (flamebait alert!) Macintosh users. Someone other than me is going to have to act on this. I simply do not have a Macintosh on my desk and, at the moment, lack the money (either personally or professionally) to buy one. There are several Mac gurus reading this email who have already done much of what is required. If this issue is not addressed, I will be forced to remove language from my web page stating that the software is supported on OSX. That would make me sad. B P.S. I suppose that binary .debs are not needed. apt-get is certainly capable of dealing with source code and doing configure and make. However, the same concept would apply. Source .debs would have to be made and collected into a repository that the instalation script knows how to look at. -- Bruce Ravel ----------------------------------- ravel@phys.washington.edu Code 6134, Building 3, Room 222 Naval Research Laboratory phone: (1) 202 767 5947 Washington DC 20375, USA fax: (1) 202 767 1697 NRL Synchrotron Radiation Consortium (NRL-SRC) Beamlines X11a, X11b, X23b, X24c, U4b National Synchrotron Light Source Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 My homepage: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel EXAFS software: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/exafs/

Thanks Bruce and Jeff, I mostly agree with Bruce's observations and proposal. I guess I don't see the Developer Disk/Fink installation as being way too difficult, especially with proper documentation, but I can see that making it simpler would be better. I should also say that I heard from Paul Fons, who was rushing out of town but said he would try to write up better instructions for using Fink and the source installation of ifeffit, athena, tkatoms, etc than currently exist. The firewall issue with Fink sounds serious. I hope the Fink people are aware of this problem, and can stick to using ports available to those of us living under the government's protection. I don't think we can solve this problem. Anyway, it would be great to have some sort of 'wizard installation' mechanism for all of ifeffit+friends. If a full binary installation can be made and maintained and updated easily, that would be fine with me. I don't know how to make such things on a Mac, and probably wouldn't be able to maintain this myself. Because of the maintenance and update issues, I sort of prefer the approach using Fink (a useful tool for other MacOSX-as-Unix things), either with good instructions or a script that automatically runs it for you to install X, g77, etc. Then Ifeffit+friends could be installed from a script that downloads, configures, compiles, and installs from the source at the Ifeffit web page. That does not seem too difficult to use or maintain. A 'download and compile source' system would make it very easy on users and developers to update to the latest codes. Plus, network-based installer/updater for Mac OS X could probably be made to work for linux as well, and possibly other Unixes. Using apt-get (or any similar system) or just rolling our own (like PGPLOT_install) is OK with me. Either way, it would not be that hard to do. Any other opinions on this? Any volunteers? Thanks, --Matt