Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio release 3.6.3 available for download

[Michael Dickens]

Hi Michael - I'm glad you're having success with at least the MacPorts part of 
things; and, thanks! I'm glad to be back on top of UHD and GNU Radio within 
MacPorts again.  Alexandru Csete already replied about what he has done with 
regard to your questions about gr-osmosdr and rtl-sdr; so, I won't replicate 
those.  Let me instead discuss the non-MacPorts parts a bit here; this is 
generic advice regarding developing on the UNIX-y side of Mac OS X.

* I highly recommend you NOT install non-MacPorts files into your MacPorts 
prefix (by default, /opt/local).  Just good programming practice, and there are 
environment variables available for handling this situation.

* I highly recommend installing non-MacPorts files into /usr/local when doing 
so by hand.  That's generally the purpose of this directory on Mac OS X -- 
extra non-system stuff.  But, really, you can use pretty much any directory 
that is non-system, and then set environment variables to access everything.

* For Python, you can use the PYTHONPATH environment variable to tell it where 
to look for installed scripts.  For example, if you have scripts installed into 
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages, you could tell Python to look there via 
executing the following in your shell (e.g., adding it to your ~/.bashrc file):

  export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages:${PYTHONPATH}

* To find executables, you set the PATH variable to include the directory/ies 
you want.  PATH is often already pre-set with the usual places, so you'll want 
to add to it:

  export PATH=${PATH}:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin

* Each executable can have its own set of environment variables to allow access 
to specific external files.  You need to check it's source code or manpages or 
help files for specifics.

* Mac OS X does not use "ldconfig" or the like.  You just use what's installed 
by setting PATH and maybe other environment variables, and they refer to what 
each executable and/or library needs internally, which allows the dynamic 
library loader to do its thing.

* I highly recommend NOT using the DYLD_* environment variables as a standard 
part of your shell environment.  These work well for testing after a project 
has been built but before it is installed.  But, setting one of them will 
invariably end up messing up some executable sooner or later; and, you won't 
have any idea why … (or, that's my experience).

I hope this helps! - MLD