[Ifeffit] Question_Demeter installation on Mac with Apple Silicon M1

[Matt Newville]

Hi Maolin,

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 11:13 PM 王茂林 <maolinwang at pku.edu.cn> wrote:

> Dear IFEFFIT members,
>
>
> Here I want to install Demeter in my Mac with M1 pro, I followed the
> processes in *https://bruceravel.github.io/demeter/documents/SinglePage/macinstallation.html
> <https://bruceravel.github.io/demeter/documents/SinglePage/macinstallation.html>*
> (First, install Xcode and Xcode command tool; Then install Macport). But
> when I type "
>
> sudo port install xorg-server demeter
>
> in the terminal and after agreeing to the terms, there came to a warning,
> shown in the attached figure. What should I do to install it on my mac? And
> the log file (also attached) seems like Demeter doesn't support the M1 with
> ARM architecture?


I'm not surprised that there is not a MacPorts port to MacOS M1/ARM yet.
As it turns out, I'm still waiting (7+ weeks!) for the delivery of an M1
Macbook Pro. I have not built any of the compiled binaries or libraries
used by Larch (say, Feff, or reading XDI file) for M1/ARM yet myself (or
tried to configure any build farms to do so).

FWIW, there was a bit of discussion on the MacPorts version of this
software:
https://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/pipermail/ifeffit/2021-November/010334.html

The message there (perhaps not a "conclusion") was that supporting Demeter
and Ifeffit on macOS is very hard.

Just to be clear, the error you see is with PGPLOT, last released in 2001
(sic).  Ifeffit (last release in 2010, bug fixes until 2014) never required
PGPLOT - it was optional.  Demeter (last release 2018) never used the
PGPLOT functionality.  For sure, porting of these tools would be easier if
PGPLOT was left out entirely, but porting code that is no longer being
developed or supported is going to be an endless chore for someone. And as
it turns out Perl+Wx+MacOS has always been extremely challenging and it
appears that no one is working on it (wxPerl last released in 2017, for any
system).

Basically, I think that no one is going to work very hard on getting
Demeter to work on macOS M1. It might be a good opportunity to try out the
alternatives.

--Matt
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