Just a quick note to say that based on these instructions, I was able to get Google Chrome running on Mac OS X, using Fink.
You'll need to enable unstable ("fink configure", followed by "fink selfupdate-rsync"), and then do a "fink install wine cabextract". Then start at the "offline installer" part of the instructions.
Woot!
Do you see that picture on the right? I bought Windows XP when it came out. An actual legitimate copy of Windows XP Home Edition. It promised a lot of things that it eventually pretty much delivered after a couple of service packs. It's moved from machine to machine as I've updated hardware. I've gotten rid of basically all of my old PC hardware and now it lives on my Macbook Pro. I've been reasonably happy with it. Except...
With such a long history, I've long-since passed the time when Microsoft accepted my key without question through internet activation. Do you know what happens when you pass that time? Painful crushing phone activation.
Observe:
First, you have to call a number, and enter 9 sets of 6 digits (they're kind enough to let you use the touch-tone phone to do it, instead of braving their voice recognition system). Then, on the 9th set, it always complains that it didn't understand the last set of digits, until you're forced to tell it to forward you to a human without finishing the automated input.
Then, since it didn't actually record all of those numbers you put in, you get to read them again to the call-center person.
Then, they read a string of numbers back to you, that you have to type in, and finally, in true Microsoft fashion, you hit "Next", followed by "Finish", because it wouldn't be Windows without a wizard with a few extra unnecessary clicks. ;)
Have you seen what you have to do to activate a pirated version of of Windows XP? I did a quick Google search out of curiosity. You use a pre-made serial number, and then run a command that will do the activation for you, and one more command to trick Windows Genuine Advantage(TM). Voila!
It's sad that I find it so tempting to pirate something I legally own just because it's so frustrating to activate the damn thing.
The best part is, the only reason I had to re-activate at all was because the logic board went bad in my MacBook Pro, and Windows no longer recognized it as the hardware it was installed on.
Even better, now that it's done, I have to re-activate every time I switch from booting in VMware to booting natively through Boot Camp, or vice-versa.
Alternatively, you know what I had to do to register my copy of Mac OS X when I installed it? Nothing. Imagine that.
FYI, I put out a new KDE/Mac snapshot a few days ago. Nothing major other than refreshing with the latest SVN and adding oKular into the build. It looks like something's wrong with plugin-loading, though, oKular can't find any file plugins.
I'll look into getting it fixed soon, and see if we can get oKular actually opening documents. ;)
I stand corrected, I must have run kbuildsycoca on one machine but started it up on another. =)
And to prove it...
So there was a little bitrot since my last packaging run in November, but I've finally managed to get a new KDE build done. If you're downloading in pieces, Qt and kdesupport have been updated too, so make sure you grab them as well as whatever else you're looking to install.
It looks like starting from the Finder works again, so my patches haven't totally rotted, and one big new thing is working -- input methods!
Unfortunately, SSL is still not happy, I've not had a chance to investigate yet. Otherwise, though, things are looking up. Please give them a shot and let me know if you run into any issues, and if you're willing to help out, join us on irc, in #kde-darwin on freenode.
It looks like some of the kde4 build issues have been fixed, I was able to complete an unassisted run of the KDE/Mac build. New binaries are up and Konqueror and other complex stuff runs again. Dirk is putting out a 3.80.2 Krash release too, and this will pretty closely correspond to that release. I'll do another build when 3.80.2 is finalized.
There's already 3 seeders, so feel free to give the torrents a shot and let me know how things work.
So I've finally gotten things pretty much set up for autobuilding KDE4/Mac packages. Universal packages for 10.4 are available here and I'm working on getting 10.3 packages put together as well. I'm still setting off the build process manually for now so I can watch it, but assuming things work out, they should start updating nightly sometime in the next few days. (Well... Assuming everything builds, of course.)
I've noticed there are some endianness issues with the png code, I need to figure out if it's in libpng or somewhere higher up, but other than that, I was able to actually open Konqueror and browse around. Things are a little more stable than my last report a few months ago, so it looks like kde is moving in a generally forward direction. :)
If you have any questions, comments, whatever, please e-mail me or visit us on IRC.
It's funny how what should have been one of the greatest open-source PR moves since Netscape opened up the mozilla codebase instead feels like "too little, too late."
Apple has announced Mac OS Forge, a project to do what OpenDarwin was already essentially created to do. It comes on the heels of months of bad PR about Apple failing to put out the X86 kernel source, and OpenDarwin shutting down due to a lack of communication between Apple and the open-source community and a lack of community involvement in general (other than a few specific exceptions like dports and WebKit).
For a company that's done a great job of getting developers excited about their platform, this really shows they don't understand the community they're trying to get help from.
The most important thing you can give an open-source developer is the feeling that he's doing something with impact; that he's donating his time to something that others will appreciate and find useful. He wants to know that the work he's doing goes, maybe not into the public domain, but into a world where everyone can stand on each other's shoulders to make something good. And he wants to know that the work he does will be there in the future, for other people to stand on and take to the next level.
If, at any time during the last 6 months, Apple had said "we understand your concerns, we have some issues that we need to work out but we are committed to keeping things open" people would be jumping for joy to hear this announcement. Instead, so far as I've seen, the overwhelming response has been... WTF? There is nothing to be gained by hiding your open-source strategy. "Release early, release often" isn't a mantra just for the sake of having one.
Those of us doing open-source development on the mac are already aware that Apple has never been entirely open, and that they are especially secretive of upcoming announcements of any kind (and I salute those of you at Apple who I'm sure had to fight to make this happen at all) but it's a shame that Apple had to let things sink to such a low before doing their triumphant return. I'm sure there are many folks who will think twice before donating code to these projects, because in the back of their mind, they're thinking, "What happens if Apple drops support again? Will my code just bitrot?"
Remember, for a project to truly stand the test of time, it has to grow beyond the few people that created it and think of it as their "baby." You have to get the community involved and excited about your software. You have to get people who are not only users, but want to help out and make your project shine. Plenty of good software goes to waste because no one ever helps out, and the core developers stop needing to work on it, or move on to other things, and they have no one to pass the mantle to. Good software dies not because it was inferior, but because it didn't try hard enough to get people's desire to contribute.
I wish Mac OS Forge well -- more open-source software on the Mac can never be a bad thing; I hope they can prove me wrong and get a huge following and rival SourceForge in the variety and vitality of projects, but it was certainly given a poor place to start from. I hope, at the least, Apple has learned their lesson and will learn to work with the people that get excited about Mac OS X, and want to see it succeed, rather than punish them for their boosterism. Those boosters were the ones who put iBooks and PowerBooks into every alpha geek's hands 3 or 4 years ago to the present. Without them, you're relegated to the sidelines.
For now, I guess all we can do is wait and see...
There are quite a few updates since my last big post. Most notable are getting mono up-to-date (although monodevelop still doesn't work), Ruby on Rails, and kde 3.5.4 (as of this post, it's 10.4-only, my 10.3 build machine is still chugging through doing a final verification build, but it should be out in the next day or two).
I've updated my universal packages for Qt and kdesupport to handle the latest that's going on in kdelibs trunk (the move to Qt 4.2 snapshots, D-Bus moving from kdesupport to Qt, etc.) You should be able to build kdelibs trunk with these packages, until things change again. ;)
If you haven't checked lately, I've been updating my Qt and kdesupport installer packages pretty regularly. If you're interested in trying out KDE4 development, all you need is the Qt and kdesupport packages here, and CMake (2.4.2 or higher).
Things are starting to settle down from the D-Bus move and it looks like things are building pretty well.
I've updated my continuous build systems so that they work again, you can track whether it currently builds on my G4 10.3 box or an intel iMac here.
