[GRASS5] Grass 5.3 on Mac OSX

[Michael Barton]

I read all of the newest discussion with interest. First, thanks Markus 
for making an updated 5.7 available in binary form. I am showing this 
around and people here in Valencia are very interested.

Second, several people (including Scott, with whom I've corresponded a 
bit directly) seemed interested in the Mac OSX binaries I compiled for 
5.3.

In response to Jens, putting something onto fink is somewhat more 
involved than simply sending something in. It is not exactly like 
contributing to a CVS, but is managed to a considerable degree (..and 
this is a good thing). Also, to put something onto fink, you need to 
make a fink.info shell script that will set up ./configure, download 
the source, and compile it. I can read through these and more or less 
make sense of them, but don't think I could create one that works right 
without a lot more effort than I have time to contribute right now. 
There is already a fink maintainer for GRASS who has been pretty 
helpful in keeping the current stable version available there.

On the other hand, I could simply create a tarball of the 
user/local/grass5 directory and /user/local/bin grass files (grass5, 
gmake5 and gmakelink5 I think), gzip them and send them to someone if 
they want them. Are there any other files  I need to include?

Before doing this, I have a question and a suggestion for 5.3 and all 
versions.

Suggestion: Right now, 5.0.x and 5.3 both create grass5 directories and 
install themselves into /usr/local/bin as grass5. I much prefer the way 
Markus has set up 5.7. It installs in /usr/local/grass57 AND in 
/usr/local/bin as grass57. This way, someone can install a new version 
without overwriting an older one. Currently, can only avoid this by 
changing both the /bin/ and /prefix/ directories in ./config. You can 
also easily choose which version you want to run at a particular time 
without trying to remember a special path.

Question: After the fact can I change the name of /usr/local/bin/grass5 
to /usr/local/bin/grass53? Same for gmake5 and gmakelink5 files, and 
/usr/local/grass5 directory? Or will this completely confuse GRASS? 
This way, a tarball I create wouldn't overwrite someone's existing 
grass 5.0.x files when untarred.

In any case, I think GRASS is a great product and am happy to help with 
it in the ways I can.

Michael Barton

____________________
C. Michael Barton, Professor
Department of Anthropology
PO Box 872402
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
USA

Phone: 480-965-6262
Fax: 480-965-7671