xmgrace and leopard?

[Ryan Schmidt]

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On Nov 16, 2007, at 16:44, Brian Barnes wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2007, at 4:33 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:25, Brian Barnes wrote:
>>
>>> I was wondering if anyone had grace functioning under OS X 10.5.   
>>> I am currently using Tiger, but haven't found any positive  
>>> reports of someone getting grace working under Leopard, and that  
>>> is a showstopper for my upgrading.  There are some X11/Xquartz  
>>> updates available, but none mention helping of building grace.   
>>> Nothing in fink or at hpc.sourceforge.net yet either.  Is anyone  
>>> working on building this package, or is a specific problem triaged?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Brian
>>>
>>> http://grace.darwinports.com/dports/x11/grace/Portfile
>>> http://www.x.org/wiki/XDarwin
>>
>> Please note that darwinports.com is not affiliated with the  
>> MacPorts project and I recommend you do not refer to that site for  
>> any information. The MacPorts web site is http://www.macports.org/
>
> Thanks for the pointer -- I am new to macports.  My understanding  
> is that the project name changed from darwinports to macports  
> sometime last year or so.  Are the darwinports.com people that just  
> branched off macports and are doing their own thing?  I am totally  
> oblivious to any story between the two sites.  I tried finding a  
> package listing on the macports webpage and failed.  Is there a  
> webpage for the grace package in macports somewhere?  I am curious  
> as to whether it requires g95 as a dependency, or if it can be  
> built with gfotran (which I would prefer).  I think the fftw  
> dependency of grace typically spurs the dependency of a fortran  
> compiler.

MacPorts used to be called DarwinPorts. However, darwinports.com has  
never been affiliated with the MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts)  
project. It's just some other individual who wanted to start a web  
site, and failed to coordinate that effort with the project. The  
MacPorts project cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information on  
that or any other site, other than the official MacPorts web site.

The current MacPorts web site does not have a port list. The old  
official DarwinPorts site did, but when our old host OpenDarwin died,  
we moved to the new Mac OS Forge host and used their default site  
template, which is a bit lacking. The site is being redesigned and  
will hopefully be relaunched soon. You can peek at the new version here:

http://apollo.homeunix.net/macports/

There is no web page for the grace port, or for most other ports.  
However, you can use port commands to learn about the port. "port cat  
foo" prints the port to the screen. "port edit foo" opens it in your  
favorite editor. "port info foo" and "port deps foo" tell you about  
the dependencies. "port variants foo" tells you about available  
variants. "man port" tells you more. In this case, the grace portfile  
makes no reference to either g95 or gfortran. I'd say ask the  
maintainer, but unfortunately the grace port has no maintainer.

You mentioned fftw, but as far as I can tell, grace does not depend  
on fftw. fftw has a fortran variant which uses gcc34, which is rather  
old. But fftw is rather old too. If you want fftw, you may want the  
port fftw-3 instead. It has two variants, fortran and g95, so you can  
choose which fortran you want. Unfortunately, the "fortran" variant  
uses gfortran from gcc40. This port should be updated to use gfortran  
from gcc42.

> My first macports experience just now was a build failure compiling  
> xscorch on 10.4/intel.  :(   Moria built fine, and now I'm trying  
> dopewars and xboard.  Starting with a few little things as tests :)

Sorry about the problem. Unfortunately xscorch is also unmaintained.  
I do not see a ticket filed in Trac about any xscorch problem. You  
should file a ticket. Instructions are here:

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/wiki/TracTicketing

> Maybe you can also answer, as macports uses "mac" in its name, is  
> it somehow affiliated with Apple or does it have some Apple  
> employees that contribute?  I am not sure what would be better in  
> the long term, to use MacPorts, or Fink.  Fink has a couple really  
> good maintainers of packages that I care about (e.g.  Jack Howarth  
> and gfortran related things), but MacPorts may be more "official"?

MacPorts changed its name from DarwinPorts to emphasize the fact that  
it's meant for Mac users. MacPorts is hosted by Mac OS Forge, an open- 
source hosting venture of Apple. Some MacPorts contributors are Apple  
employees. But none of this makes MacPorts an Apple project; it's  
not. Neither Fink nor MacPorts are more official. I imagine some Fink  
contributors work at Apple too. Apple's a big company. I personally  
decided a few years ago to switch to MacPorts (then DarwinPorts)  
since Fink was giving me grief, and as you see I've stuck with it now  
and I'm happy with that decision.

About half the ports in MacPorts are unmaintained. But the other half  
do have maintainers. It is still a growing project and needs all the  
help it can get. Willing maintainers who stay on top of their ports  
and keep them updated and working are certainly sought. If you see a  
port in MacPorts that's unmaintained, but you care about the  
software, it would be appreciated if you would offer to maintain it.  
If you would spend the time and energy to compile it for yourself  
manually, why not invest that time and energy into fixing the  
MacPorts portfile so all can enjoy it, right?

Leopard is being especially problematic. I personally am not  
upgrading to Leopard yet because of all the problems I've seen  
reported. (Just search the issue tracker for "Leopard".) On the other  
hand, this makes it difficult for me to help fix the Leopard problems  
that people report with the ports I maintain. As an early adopter of  
Leopard, you might be uniquely able to help us during this  
troublesome transition.