[GRASS-dev] WARNING TO MAC USERS - WAIT UPDATING TO EL CAPITAN (OS X 10.11)

[William Kyngesburye]

My thought is that it's a packaging problem.

As it is, the GRASS source should run on El Cap, with a simple configure-make-install and no packaging.  It will use external libraries in their installed locations, which should work in El Cap.

The problem comes when some of those external libraries are bundled inside the app without any modification (ie wxPython).  Those libraries still have their embedded install locations which would normally break other software (and is not related to the El Capitan problem), but GRASS sets DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to get around this (I don't know the original reason for this, but it makes the package moveable/renamable).  DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH is where the El Cap problem comes in - as part of new security features the system now ignores this.

2 possible solutions, both on the packaging end:

- compile the external libraries (before compiling GRASS) as if they are embedded in the GRASS app.  That is, configure the prefix to be inside the to-be-installed GRASS app.

- post-process the libraries when bundled to update the embedded library paths.

The first is simple, but has a couple drawbacks: the app is not moveable (minor) because it still depends on the full paths embedded in the libraries and GRASS, and this doesn't work with premade binaries of the libraries (like wxPython).

The second is harder, but can be done to any bundled library or tool, and the paths can be made relative to make the app movable/renamable.  Though the movablility part would be best supplemented by changes in the GRASS source makefiles to make GRASS have all relative paths (this is what I was originally looking at, that stalled me).

At a minimum, and the simplest, full paths should be changed in the bundled external libraries, by either or both methods.

> On Dec 4, 2015, at 2:09 PM, Brian Miles <selimnairb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Michael, William,
> 
> I'd like to take a look at this to see if I can help.  I'm not an expert in makefiles, or linkers, but I'm willing to put some time in to help move the ball forward.  Is there a synopsis of the problem so I don't have to start from square one?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Brian
> 
>> On Dec 4, 2015, at 2:47 PM, Michael Barton <Michael.Barton at asu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> This is still not resolved. William Kyngesburye has suggested some ways forward, but we are not yet sure exactly what causes the failure. Help is appreciated.
>> 
>> Michael
>> ____________________
>> C. Michael Barton
>> Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity 
>> Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
>> Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
>> Arizona State University
>> 
>> voice:  480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
>> fax: 480-965-7671 (SHESC),  480-727-0709 (CSDC)
>> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 4, 2015, at 12:36 PM, Brian Miles <selimnairb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Michael,
>>> 
>>> Just wondering what the status is on this.  Is there a ticket describing the problems with OS X 10.11 and GRASS, and hopefully tracking the progress to a fix?  I tried searching the tickets (http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/), but wasn't able to filter out enough false positives.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Brian Miles
>>> Research Scientist
>>> Institute for the Environment
>>> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 8, 2015, at 8:14 PM, grass-dev-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> From: Michael Barton <Michael.Barton at asu.edu>
>>>> Date: October 8, 2015 at 8:07:58 PM EDT
>>>> To: GRASS developers grass-developers <grass-dev at lists.osgeo.org>, "grass-user grass-user" <grass-user at lists.osgeo.org>
>>>> Subject: [GRASS-dev] WARNING TO MAC USERS - WAIT UPDATING TO EL CAPITAN (OS X 10.11)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I've had reports of GRASS not running for users updating to El Capitan. There is a possible workaround, but it is cumbersome and not guaranteed to work. I recommend that you do wait to update while we try to solve this. 
>>>> 
>>>> I've also heard that El Capitan breaks R.
>>>> 
>>>> Michael
>>>> ____________________
>>>> C. Michael Barton
>>>> Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity 
>>>> Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
>>>> Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
>>>> Arizona State University
>>>> 
>>>> voice:  480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
>>>> fax: 480-965-7671 (SHESC),  480-727-0709 (CSDC)
>>>> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu
>>> 
>> 
> 

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.