Using macports to create binary package

[Manav Bhatia]

Thanks, Craig. 

By “non-standard, non-root locations” I was trying to reflect on my experience on some of the open-source packages that I frequency use on Mac OS in an app form. For example, Gmsh (http://gmsh.info <http://gmsh.info/>), deal.ii (https://www.dealii.org/download.html) and sage (http://www.sagemath.org/download.html) all provide .app bundles that I can put anywhere in my drive and they work. Note that gmsh has a GUI and deal.ii is a terminal app. 

What I have in mind is something similar to deal.ii (which uses cpack to create the bundle). 

You are right about the benefits of keeping a single location, say /opt/manav, but writing to that location would require someone to have root access. This is my constraint. 

-Manav

> On Jul 20, 2018, at 2:02 PM, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven at macports.org> wrote:
> 
> My understanding is that dylibbundler is only for making double-clickable Mac apps.  Perhaps I’m wrong.
> 
> When you say "I need these to work in non-standard, non-root locations”, what is it that you are concerned about?  
> 
> If you create an installer with MacPorts, the user is going to need an administrator password successfully deploy the software.  After that, the user should be able to run your program from the Terminal with any userid.  It will be more convenient if they modify their PATH to include the location your software is installed into.  For example, if you use the prefix ‘/opt/manav’ when creating your installer, they will likely need to add ‘/opt/manav/bin’ to their PATH.  That’s it.  You won’t have to mess around with fixing up embedded paths—they remain the same from build system to deployed software.  
> 
> Craig
> 
>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 2:24 PM, Manav Bhatia <bhatiamanav at gmail.com <mailto:bhatiamanav at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> No GUI. My app is a terminal application with plenty of dependencies. My users are at places and on systems without root access. 
>> 
>> I am not sure what the best approach is here, but I am looking at various options where I can distribute precompiled binaries. 
>> 
>> Dylibbundler sounds interesting but I have no experience to try to judge its limitations. 
>> 
>> I am also looking at CPack (from cmake), which seems to have some promise as it is cross-platform compatible, so I can use the same cmake configuration script to create bundles on Mac and Linux. 
>> 
>> I need these to work in non-standard, non-root locations. 
>> 
>> This should not be so difficult. 
>> 
>> -Manav
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 1:01 PM, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven at macports.org <mailto:ctreleaven at macports.org>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Others will have to advise you on dylibbundler; it doesn’t do what I need so I’ve never used it.
>>> 
>>> Does your app provide a Mac gui?  Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to create an app bundle.
>>> 
>>> Craig
>>> 
>>>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 11:03 AM, Manav Bhatia <bhatiamanav at gmail.com <mailto:bhatiamanav at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I typically do:
>>>> 
>>>> $ port install openmpi-clang hdf5 eigen boost 
>>>> 
>>>> before building my application. This installs (a lot of) dependencies, including gcc. 
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks for pointing me to dylibbundler. I was not aware of that. I will look into the details of this package. 
>>>> 
>>>> Will this be able to take ports installed in a default /opt/local location and pack them in an app bundle? 
>>>> 
>>>> -Manav
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 9:53 AM, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven at macports.org <mailto:ctreleaven at macports.org>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 8:51 AM, Manav Bhatia <bhatiamanav at gmail.com <mailto:bhatiamanav at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I saw some instructions related to octave that describes creations of an app bundle that can be put anywhere: https://wiki.octave.org/Create_a_MacOS_X_App_Bundle_Using_MacPorts <https://wiki.octave.org/Create_a_MacOS_X_App_Bundle_Using_MacPorts>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> One of the commands they used is install_name_tool: 
>>>>>> install_name_tool -change /opt/local/libiconv.2.dylib @executable_path/../lib/libiconv.2.dylib Octave-3.7.0+
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So, if I only keep the specific header files and relevant dyld files, with enough care something like this should be possible (?). 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -Manav
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Creating a Mac application bundle is a somewhat different objective from what I thought was your stated goal.  You haven’t said what you want to package.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If it is appropriate to package your app as an app bundle, then perhaps dylibbundler is what you need.  Check ‘port info dylibbundler’ and ‘port gohome dylibbundler’.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Craig
>>>> 
>>> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-users/attachments/20180720/6bf993ba/attachment.html>