[Ifeffit] Getting started in OS X...

[Paul Fons]

It is not all *that* difficult to get things running on the Macintosh.  
The main problem from my perspective is keeping things up-to-date.  I 
could make a binary installer (it is not really that hard), but there 
are probably several hundred files that need to be installed and 
keeping this working long term sounds like a potentially time consuming 
project.  I was thinking of a two part installation process:

1. install the apple developer CD contents (included with 10.2)
2. download from www.apple.com, Apple's installer for X11 (binary 
installer)
3. install the fink binary installer
4. (on the command line) type "fink install horae"

    If I follow up on this (I was hoping to talk to Matt and Bruce about 
this at XAFS 12), all I would have to maintain is a file that tells 
your computer how to compile horae and ifeffit -- this is easy as I 
already do it on my Mac myself.  Within fink (an installation package 
manager that connects to a remote server for the latest versions 
automagically), I could ensure that all of the packages are compatible 
with each other, and that the latest versions are being used.  fink 
would automatically install a fortran compiler (useful for other things 
too) as well as all of the latest versions of the relevant libraries 
(e.g. pgplot, python) all with the input show on line four above.
    My main worry about a binary installer is that since *I* am using 
fink for many items, if I *were* to make a binary installer, I might 
very well clobber (overwrite) part of a horae users fink installation.  
This is bad in two ways.  The binary install might very well destroy 
the users fink installation and since the fink database (with a binary 
installer) wouldn't know anything about my files, running fink might 
very well destroy horae/ifeffit.  If there is enough interest, I might 
give it a shot, but this would be only for people who don't use fink.

		Any thoughts?




Paul Fons, Ph.D.
Senior Staff Researcher
Photonics Institute
National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science & Technology
Tsukuba, JAPAN 305-8568
email: paul-fons at aist.go.jp
tel. +81-298-61-5636 fax: +81-298-61-5615

The lines below are in Japanese
主任研究官　ポール・フォンス
産業技術総合研究所
光技術研究部門
つくば市茨城県　 305-8568
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