[GRASS-user] need help with mac os x installation

[Stuart Edwards]

...... very timely.  Just spent the best part of two weeks struggling  
with this topic. Several variables involved.  Intel, PPC, 6.2,  
6.3cvs, Lorenzo or Kyng.  Started out with Lorenzo on Intel using  
6.3cvs -- as you say, too buggy for production work.  On PPC  
sometimes 6.2 works better, sometimes 6.3cvs.  Again, turns out to be  
too buggy. (as an aside I'm trying remember enough of the problems to  
put together a list for a future post).

Then, as a last resort I tried Kyng GRASS 6.3cvs (had problems trying  
to get his earlier binaries to run) on both Intel and PPC and once  
you get it set up, it works like a charm -- no bugs thus far (after 3  
or 4 days work).  I did find that the order of installation is  
important -- make sure you have the X11 windowing system installed  
first.  It's not part of OSX but there is a copy on the OSX  
installation disc.  Tricky to find but it's there.  Then the  
frameworks (use the 'install them all' package) and finally GRASS  
6.3cvs.

Having used Lorenzo's binaries for a while (circa 6.1), always found  
them reliable.  But with the new GUI, Intel issues and the need for  
Rosetta, different windowing system -- too much seems to go wrong and  
it's incredibly time consuming trying to figure out what is causing a  
particular problem (including the initial presumption that it's an  
'infrequent user - operator error'!).  Kyng GRASS is compiled  
natively for the Intel chip and so cuts out the overhead and errors  
of Rosetta, and by sticking to the 'tried and true' X11 system cuts  
out the GUI errors.  It's much snappier too, even though the GUI is  
not as 'Mac' as Lorenzo's.   IMO, Kyng GRASS is the only way to go  
for Mac users at the current time.

All that being said, thanks to both for working on making GRASS  
available to us unix-impaired OSX users -- it's a great service that  
you provide.

Hope that helps  --

Stu


On Sep 3, 2007, at 8:36 AM, Moritz Lennert wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> As we will finally switch our GIS teaching to GRASS/QGIS, I now  
> need to help our professor to install these on her Mac OS X 10.4.10.
>
> I decided to use 6.2.
>
> I started with William's port at http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/ 
> unixport/grass, first installing all the frameworks, then grass.  
> However, when I try to launch grass I get a message about there  
> being a problem with the wish command. A 'which wish' in a terminal  
> show /usr/bin/wish. Do I need to install another version of tcl/tk  
> for GRASS ?
>
> I also tried Lorenzo's http://wwwamb.bologna.enea.it/forgrass/.  
> This runs, but several commands make the GUI crash (v.surf.rst,  
> r.contours).
>
> So, several questions: any recommendation about which OS X port to  
> use ? What are the differences ?
>
> And any ideas what causes the troubles in each of the two I've tried ?
>
> Thanks,
> Moritz
>
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