[GRASSLIST:1100] Re: GRASSLIST digest 1136

[Bill Dickinson Jr]

Thanks for the email, Scott, and the vote of confidence for GRASS 
under OS X. I'm glad to hear that there are people out there that 
haven't had the problems I have had, so, hopefully, it is mostly an 
issue with the database connections. And there is always the 
possibility of my problems being related to my specific OS X setup 
here, though I don't know how to go about figuring such a thing out 
myself.

My next step is to try running GRASS without any database 
connections. I'll let everyone know how that goes once I get the time 
to work it out. ;-)

Bill

>I have been using GRASS on my Mac running OS X for a couple of years 
>without trouble.  The major caveat is that I have not needed the 
>database access routines.  I haven't had time to investigate them 
>yet, so am not much help to you there.  However, other people should 
>not get the impression that GRASS as a whole is a problem under OS 
>X.  The commands that I regularly use all work perfectly, and it is 
>news to me that the database stuff doesn't.
>
>I normally compile from source on my own machine, but I get a lot of 
>the packages GRASS depends on from fink.  I have been following 
>development versions of 5.0.x with regular recompiles, and haven't 
>had any troubles in months getting it to compile.  The GRASS 
>development people have been making a good effort to make the build 
>system recognize the OS X platform and use the proper compile-time 
>adjustments.  And just recently, the "experimental" GRASS 5.1 was 
>successfully modified to compile under OS X too.
>
>A colleague of mine (and I provide most of his "tech support" on 
>this) uses GRASS from fink, and has had no troubles (but he doesn't 
>use the postgres stuff either).  I think that this is a good option 
>for installing GRASS, and am sorry to hear you didn't hear from the 
>maintainer about your troubles.  The R stats package IS available 
>through fink, by the way, contrary to what you wrote in one of your 
>posts.  Perhaps we can discuss what specifically was wrong with the 
>package ?  Again, if it has only to do with the postgres stuff, I'm 
>probably not too useful. I have seen lots of traffic going by on the 
>fink mailing lists about postgres, so perhaps someone out there is 
>using the combination and can help.  I'd be willing to experiment, 
>but will have learning curve and time management issues, especially 
>as the new term begins.
>
>In short, I'm sorry to hear you're having problems, but I think it 
>should be clear to other people that these problems seem to be 
>specific to the integration of GRASS and external database systems, 
>not to the GRASS system as a whole.
>
>Cheers,
>Scott
>------
>Scott W. Mitchell		Scott_Mitchell AT carleton.ca
>Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
>Carleton University, B349 Loeb Building
>Ottawa, ON Canada
>
>
>There have been a FEW posts on this recently, I think it all started with:
>
>On Wednesday, Sep 3, 2003, at 01:01 Canada/Eastern, Multiple 
>recipients of list wrote:
>
>>>On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 09:23, Bill Dickinson Jr wrote:
>>>>  Hey there:
>>>>
>>>>  I have been running in circles for about 2 months now trying to get
>>>>  GRASS installed on my OS X box and have yet to get it successfully
>>>>  running. If there is someone out there who has successfully installed
>>>>  and is currently running GRASS on their Mac, and would have the time
>>>  > to talk me through yet another installation attempt, I would
>>>>  appreciate the assist. My "friends" keep telling me to stop beating
>>>>  my head against the OS X wall and simply use a Linux box, but being a
>>>>  Mac-fanatic I would really like to have it working on my Mac. ;-)
>>>>
>>>>  Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>  Bill
>>>--


-- 

Bill Dickinson
GIS Specialist
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Environmental & Safety Branch, Code 250
wdickins at pop700.gsfc.nasa.gov