Side effects?

[Ian Wadham]

On 31/01/2013, at 11:42 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On Jan 31, 2013, at 06:07, Ian Wadham wrote:
>> On 31/01/2013, at 2:37 PM, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:
>> 
>>> It is routinely a GSoC project, and since we were not chosen last year it has definitely fallen behind.
>>> 
>>>> BTW, does Macports have a nice safe GUI?
>> 
>> If I knew what tools to use on Apple Mac, I might have a crack
>> at it myself.  I have had quite a bit of experience with designing
>> and programming GUIs, databases, SQL, Shell scripts and an
>> in-house GUI-based build system where I used to work.
> 
> The tools to use on the Mac are Xcode and a knowledge of Cocoa.
> 
> You could always start by reading the code for Pallet, which is in our repository. Or even fork Pallet and work on improving it, with either the goal of improving Pallet or just learning enough about Cocoa and how to integrate with the MacPorts Framework to begin your own GUI from scratch.

Thanks for the info, Ryan.

I did "sudo port install -k -s pallet" and then started digging around in
the Macports directory structure for Pallet and some source code.
Eventually I found:
  /opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_sysutils_Pallet/Pallet/work/Pallet

which contained some *.m and *.h files.  Is that the right stuff?

I am unfamiliar with both Objective C and the Macports structure … :-(

However, I am familiar with C++, Qt and Qt Designer (a forms designer
and code generator for Qt-based GUIs).  Is there a forms designer for
Mac, BTW?  Hand-coding of widgets can be laborious ...

I could write something in C++ and Qt, but that might cause a chicken
and egg problem down the line, i.e. to use the GUI you would first have
to install qt4-mac.  Also it takes quite a while to install qt4-mac from the
command line, even as a binary package, which might be a turnoff for
beginning users.

Or maybe I could prototype in C++ and Qt while boning up on Xcode
and Cocoa …  BTW I have OS X 10.7.5 Lion and Xcode 4.2.1.  Would
those be OK as a platform, from Macports' point of view?

I also had a quick look at Tcl/Tk at http://www.bin-co.com/tcl/tutorial/
It's a bit too Shell-like for me … :-)  I am quite at home in Shell scripts,
but am rather wary of using them when not absolutely necessary.

Cheers, Ian W.