Re: [Gnumed-devel] Mac packages

[Busser, Jim]

On 2013-09-16, at 1:16 PM, Karsten Hilbert <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:02:55PM +0200, Hilbert, Sebastian wrote:
> 
>> Building dmg is no problem at all. However we use python and wxpython instead
>> of c++ and qt. wxpython on Mac is the main problem as far as I know.
> 
> Regarding some of the functionality or regarding usable
> wxPython packages to be packaged into the DMG ?
> 
> Karsten

While a tarball *can* be put inside a downloadable Mac .dmg, this would achieve 
little more than to supply, from the wiki, a link called "Tarball for Mac".

The problem on the Mac is that Apple's operating system has never supplied, on 
a base system, the various dependencies needed by GNUmed and AFAICT has not 
provided an organized way to manage a side-installation.

A side-installation is required because some of the dependencies (like the 
needed versions of python) could otherwise conflict with what Apple has 
installed as its 'base" python which Apple has bent to its own use.

The choices available to GNUmed for Mac include:

- to piggy-back on an existing, side-install port system for Mac (e.g. MacPorts 
or Home brew)
- to develop our own side-install scripts, or
- to supply a Mac GNUmed "app" (fat binary) which contains all the dependencies

The limiting factor so far has been lack of a wx that can work with the 
existing MacPorts. It's possible that a development version of wx might work if 
combined with the right combination of other packages. Sebastian was helping me 
to play with this many months ago but I got stuck and have not had the chance 
to give it another try.

-- Jim