constructive nonconformist

Installing Git

This is a ‘note to self’ about Git and how to build and install on Mac OS X and how to install on Windows.

Building and Installing Git on Mac OS X (specifically 10.5 Leopard)

I haven’t been won over by Fink or MacPorts. There is the git-osx-installer project on Google Code which provides a DMG. But I’m comfortable with Makefiles and I have the Developer tools installed, so I build and install from the source.

Here are the steps I follow:

1. Get the ‘latest stable GIT release’ from http://git.or.cz/. As of this post the latest stable Git release was v1.6.1. Get the tar.bz2¹ file, for example: git-1.6.1.tar.bz2.
2. Unpack the tar file. I have a ~/Projects directory. In the Finder I typically move the tar file to ~/Projects and then double-click the tar. The Mac OS X 10.5 Archive Utility will handle the file. git-1.6.1.tar.bz2 will be unpacked into a directory named git-1.6.1.
   
   From the command line the tar command would be something like:
   tar xjf git-1.6.1.tar.bz2
3. I want to install Git to /usr/local. I also want to be able to easily mange new Git installs and Git has lots of parts so I create a subdirectory for Git in /usr/local.
   1. Create a directory in /usr/local for the Git release, for example:
      sudo mkdir /usr/local/git-1.6.1
   2. Create a subdirectory for the Git release man pages, for example:
      sudo mkdir /usr/local/git-1.6.1/man
   3. If this is the first install of Git on the machine, create a symbolic link to the release directory:
      sudo ln -s /usr/local/git-1.6.1 /usr/local/git
      
      Going forward, /usr/local/git should always link to the release you currently want to use.
   4. Add /usr/local/git/bin to your PATH.
   5. Add /usr/local/git/man to your MANPATH.
   
   
4. Change directory into the unpacked source code, for example:
   cd ~/Project/git-1.6.1
5. Configure the build. Set the prefix to the directory the release should be installed into. For example:
   make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/git-1.6.1
6. Build Git.
   make
7. Install Git.
   sudo make install
8. Don’t bother building the man pages. Get the matching man pages tar from http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/.
   

   For example: git-manpages-1.6.1.tar.bz2.
   

   From the command line, unpack the tar into the install location, for example:
   sudo tar xjf git-manpages-1.6.1.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/git-1.6.1/man

9. If needed, update the /usr/local/git symbolic link.

Resources for Git on Mac OS X:

Compiling git on OS X Leopard — GitHub Guides — GitHub
Compiling Git for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)
A Funkaoshi Production :: Building Git on Mac OS X

Windows

I don’t build from scratch on Windows. I’m currently trying out the msysgit package from Google Code.

¹The bzip2 compression is more efficient than the older gzip compression.

"Photoshop will now exit"

I realized tonight that Photoshop 7.0.1 doesn’t run under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Officially Adobe doesn’t support Photoshop 7.0 anymore and there will be no updates for Leopard compatibility. The consensus on various forums is that there is no work-around.

Link: Photoshop 7.0 - FixYa

I upgraded to Leopard a while ago and I’m running an old version of Photoshop, so clearly I’m not a heavy user. But I was a bit dismayed — for a moment. And then I thought “Why do I need Photoshop?”

My use of Photoshop was largely oriented toward preparing images for the web. There was a time when Photoshop was the leader among a very small number of applications that could do that job well. That’s no longer the case.

I will not be going back to Tiger for the sake of any one application. I will not be buying an upgrade from Adobe. I will be freeing up some space on my hard drive. Photoshop has left the building.

Mac OS X: Setting Environment Variables for User Processes

Link: Technical Q&A QA1067: Setting environment variables for user processes.

Coda Sites

Of Coda some have said essentially “Cool app. Too bad I can’t use it.” The reasons are varied but can mostly be generalized to ‘Coda doesn’t fit the work I do and/or doesn’t fit the way that I do my work.’¹

Panic shouldn’t try to change Coda to please everyone. Doing so would ruin the product. It’s fine and good for the product vision to remain idiosyncratic and for some people to ‘not get it.’

I have no inside knowledge of Panic’s vision for Coda and I have no expectation of having any influence but that’s not going to stop me from sharing a few ideas about Coda.

I have issues with the way Coda manages sites.

Clearly Panic created Coda in part to scratch their own itch. Apparently their custom is to directly edit their live sites. A Coda ‘site’ is modeled on the idea of a production web server and a local copy of the files. With the v1.0.1 update, support was added for a local development web server.

I need a different ‘site’ model. When I build a website it’s generally for a client. In addition to development and production, I need a third server: a ‘user acceptance testing’ web server. Sometimes I need a fourth server for prototyping. (Of course I don’t need separate physical servers. Prototyping, development, and testing could be different directories and/or ports on one server.)

For Coda the live site is primary and there is one set of content for the site. For me the set of content is primary and there can be multiple deployments of the content.

According to Cabel’s blog in Coda’s first week of release subversion integration was a top request. If version control is used effectively the ‘authority’ for a web site’s content should be the version control repository, not the live site. Deployments to the live site should be based on a branch or a label in the version control system. Direct updates to the live site should, under normal circumstances, be avoided.

Site information appears to be stored as opaque data in the Coda preferences file. This means that site information is tied to Coda for a specific user account on a specific machine. Working on different machines or working with others as a team requires redundant copies of the site information.

A project file would allow for sharing and versioning site information. But I’m guessing Panic purposefully avoided the concept of a project file. Although others have referred to Coda as an IDE, Panic has not. Panic may envision Coda as something much less ‘industrial’.

It will be interesting to see how Coda evolves. (Here’s an idea: Add an embedded web server.) I wish Panic success with Coda but I have to say as of v1.01: Cool app. But I can’t use it.

¹ Some posts about Coda:
Link: Clickable Bliss — Coda Thoughts.
Link: Panic’s Coda is Not My Style | NSLog();.
Link: Michael Tsai - Blog - Coda 1.0.

Coda Web Development

Panic released Coda today.

Link: Panic - Coda - One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X.

I downloaded and started playing with the trial version of Coda tonight. My first impressions are very positive. Coda could become my primary web development editor/tool (displacing the formidable but aging BBEdit).

Be sure to check out the release notes.

There’s currently no integrated version control support but in a quick reply to my support email Cabel said SVN support is high on the list of planned features. Cool. And in the near term I can do what I need from the built-in terminal.

Now I need to get busy writing some Subetha Engine modes.

MacWorld Speculations

The Stevenote is tomorrow. I’m not predicting but I’ll speculate.

1. iLife 07 and iWork 07. I think new revisions are a given. A new spreadsheet application as part of iWork? That would be cool but Think Secret’s screenshots are bogus.
2. Mac Mini revved to at least Core 2 Duo.
3. Doc Oc - the Mac Pro Octo. Four-way dual cores.
   
   (There’s a meme out there that users won’t really benefit from more than 2 cores until software is rewritten. This idea gets repeated on TWIT a lot. I don’t agree. It depends on how the machine is used. Don’t buy a large multi-way machine just to make a particular application run faster. Buy a large multi-way machine if your work or your work style involves having multiple applications open and actually doing stuff concurrently.)
4. No early release for Leopard. There’s reportedly a Tiger update in the pipeline. But an actual release date could be announced.
5. Do you believe in redbox? Baking in as a standard Mac OS X service/feature the ability to run Windows application (either through virtualization or by supporting the Win32 API) is not in Apple’s best interest. I don’t expect Apple to do anything more than ship BootCamp with Leopard and promote the Parallels and VMWare products. If there is something more, it won’t be part of the standard install (ala X11), or it will be an expensive separate product, or it will be an enterprisey server thing.
6. The Apple phone. I dunno. Yeah, I haven’t really liked the UI of any phone and I think Apple could do better. But is it possible Apple could be ready to ship product without any leaks from partners? Maybe there are no partners.
   
   One thing is certain. Nokia is already using WebKit. If there’s an Apple phone, WebKit will be the embedded browser.
7. I’d like to see some home networking hardware: an XServe Mini or an Apple NAS. But I’m not a very big market.

Update January 11, 2007:

1. No.


2. No.


3. No.


4. Yes! I was right. Wait, that's bad. Nuts.


5. Undetermined. No new information either way. (There wasn't much Mac in this MacWorld keynote.)


6. Well, I didn't call it. But I had the WebKit part right.


7. No mini server but the new AirPort Extreme includes a NAS-like feature for sharing a USB drive.

iChat Update 1.0

It’s Thursday. MacWorld San Francisco 2007 starts Monday.

Software Update pops up tonight with a 3.0 MB ‘iChat Update 1.0’. The description:

This update renews the .Mac certificate required by iChat for encrypting text, audio, and video conferences.

This document will be updated as more information becomes available.

What more information could there be about a cert update?

My entire keychain database (which includes numerous certificates) is less than one sixth of the size of this update.

Link: iChat: About the iChat Update 1.0.

blogzot

Link: MacZot Is Giving Away SubEthaEdit..

BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com is a promotion for SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys. MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software.

Cool. SubEthaEdit is a great tool.

Dual Boot? I Don't Need No Stinking Dual Boot.

Prior to WWDC 2005 I was incredulous. Apple switching the Mac to Intel chips? That couldn’t be true. I got over the shock quickly.

Now that Intel based Macs are available there’s a prize for the first person to find a way to dual boot Mac OS X and Windows XP. Yawn.

Link: Contest: Dual-booting WinXP and Mac OS X on Intel Mac - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

Maybe there’s a market for Windows compatible machines built by Apple but not in my household. In 1999 I bought a dual processor Dell workstation and I expected that I had probably purchased my last Mac. Today I still have and use that Dell workstation but I suspect it is probably the last Windows machine I will ever buy.

Given a choice between Windows XP and Mac OS X, I prefer Mac OS X. I have met people who are dismissive of Mac users. I have also met people who seem to get incensed by the idea that there’s something that might be preferred over Windows. I don’t proselytize for Macintosh and I don’t abide extreme OS fanaticism. Mac OS X works better for me. Your mileage may vary.

I do have a need to run Windows. I need to be able to test under Windows and I need a machine where I can do native .Net development.

Right now .Net doesn’t pay the bills. There’s a good chance there will be a .Net project in my future but until then I can’t justify replacing my existing Windows machine.

It would be a better value if I could do everything on one machine. So why don’t I care about dual booting? Because dual booting is disruptive and inefficient. I want to extend the set of tools available to me, not create two separate sets of tools. Dual booting is like a modal user interface.

Microsoft is being coy about whether there will be a Mac OS X Intel version of Virtual PC but that’s the type of solution I’m looking for: a virtualized OS in a sandbox.

Maybe VMware will come through.

Link: Stefan Tilkov’s Random Stuff: Mail from VMware.

FireWire Target Mode on Intel-based Macs

I’m heartened to see that FireWire Target Mode didn’t disappear with Open Firmware.

Link: Startup key combinations for Intel-based Macs.