Re: gEDA: Icarus Verilog Snapshot 20030329 [Mac OS X binaries]

[Charles Lepple <clepple-at-NOSPAMghz_dot_cc>]

Stephen Williams wrote:
> clepple@ghz.cc said:
> 
>>Question for the other OS X users on the list: how many of you are
>>using  Fink? What about other packaging systems (e.g. the ports
>>system)? 
> 
> 
> My personal bias is to use the most native packaging available for
> a given platform. For Windows, I wrote a proper installer that
> smells like the installers people are accustomed to for other
> products. For Linux, There are rpms for RedHat/Mandrake, and there
> are Debian packages for Debian users. For Solaris, there are
> Solaris .pkg packages.

It may be possible to create a native OS X Installer package out of the 
files, but I can't say I'm volunteering to do it that way. Well, not 
unless I can somehow convince my employer to put a Mac on my desk at 
work :-)

Also, there's the issue that "true" Mac apps reference files relative to 
where they are installed. I thought I read somewhere that the Windows 
version of iverilog is similarly relocatable, but mingw.txt implies that 
you choose the installation prefix at compile time.

While making iverilog into an OS X "bundle" (a relocatable directory 
structure containing the app itself, the support files, and a few 
metadata files) has some advantages (could enable drag-n-drop, for 
instance), I think that a lot of things are still going to be 
command-line driven.

> As for the specific matter of Fink or not Fink, it seems that
> Icarus Verilog on Mac OS X already requires it.

That, or the OS X Ports system, or anything else that provides the 
libraries. Just as there's more than one Linux distribution, there are a 
handful of different ways to get library xyz onto a Mac.

> The latest snapshots even more then previously. This suggests that the most positive
> experience would come from a Fink package that automatically manages
> dependencies, a la RPMS for Linux. Can Fink packages do that?

Yes. Think of it like a wrapper around the Debian package system.

There's a core package for Fink (basic Unix-y tools, and the package 
manager), then you can either build from source ("fink install pkgname" 
will fetch and build prereqs, plus the actual package) or, once someone 
has uploaded the compiled .deb file, just use dselect (curses-based 
binary package manager, familiar to Debian users) or FinkCommander 
(native GUI app) to download and install the necessary binary packages. 
Kind of like the Cygwin installer, I guess.

-- 
Charles Lepple <clepple@ghz.cc>
http://www.ghz.cc/charles/