Hanne's blog

I needed to be able to build a mpkg pakcage. I couldn't find any package manager or the like on Mac. So I googled.

This was actually not simple to find out. At least not to my logic. I probably googled the wrong words... because I didn't know the name of the things I needed.

I found this that page tells me how to do it:
http://s.sudre.free.fr/Stuff/PackageMaker_Howto.html.

It says Developers Tools but must be installed.

First I found some stuff telling me to install Developers Tools from the DVDs. Which I hadn't brought home. Which is why I hate non free software, its not so much the money, it's the inconvenience. Anyway, it turned out not to be on the #*@&!$ DVDs so that was one bit of wasted hatred.

Ever tried putting a DVD in a Macbook? It makes a noise like a minor rocket launch. Definitely not for watching DVDs in the quiet compartment on the train...

Then I found this page http://expsy.ugent.be/tscope/doc/download/node1.html, telling me that it must be\ndownloaded from http://developer.apple.com/tools which requires you to create an account. This worked.

Reading the license agreement tells me that the primary idea of this arrangement is to get people to accept that it is not Apple's responsibility when they mess up their system with their home made software. But that could be done by popping up the same agreement when you installed from DVD. So the real reason is probably that they want to know all kinds of things about you and want to spam you with stuff. Anyway they will get into my filter right away if that happens. All I want to do is to build a tiny little package. So now I can whine about the account part instead of the DVDs...

So after giving Apple all kinds of information about me I was allowed to download a standard Mac package and install it.

It ends up in /Developer. Now I can start figuring out how to build my package.

Update: After installing developers tools I got several errors. When I tried to run cvs or make from the command line, I got "cannot execute binary file". When I tried to install a package by double clicking it, I got "The application installer quit unexpectedly".

http://people.binf.ku.dk/hanne/pics/div/20081007-03-Mac-before-reinstall.jpg

So I decided it was time to install those software updates it has been bugging me about. That went well, I mean, no errors or crashes. So now I run Mac OS X 10.5.5. It didn't solve the problem, though.

Somehow I don't think I'll become a Mac user.