[Qgis-developer] Mac OS X frameworks for support libraries

Thu Jul 27 15:52:23 EDT 2006

Hi William

This is really excellent! Ill give it a try asap (as soon as I have
removed all the old libs I got from you cleanly etc).

Are the frameworks relocateable? IE if I want to stick the gdal & proj
frameworks into an app bundle, will i need to run otool rename on them
or not? Im guessing I will?

This is really good news...

Regards

Tim

On 7/27/06, William Kyngesburye <woklist at kyngchaos.com> wrote:
> Ready to be released into the wild.  In a beta sort of way.  The idea
> was to make them more Mac-like - bring them out into the open more,
> not hidden away in some invisible folder, and thus make them more of
> a drag-n-drop install, and hopefully more of a standard for other to
> use in their own software.  While also keeping them easily usable in
> a normal Unix sort of way.  They could be also easily embedded in Mac
> application packages like other normal frameworks.
>
> So far I'm sticking to the basics needed by the various GIS
> applications, and it's Tiger only right now.  It's possible to make
> them Panther compatible, but it's a hassle and I just want to get
> them working and tested first, and get feedback.  All are universal
> binaries.  All can be installed with a simple drag-n-drop to /Library/
> Frameworks.
>
> Included are:
>
> - Xerces framework - this was easy, there is a framework build in the
> source already
>
> - SQLite3 framework
>
> - FFTW3 framework
>
> - FreeType framework
>
> - UnixImageIO framework - a bit of an experiment.  This is an
> 'umbrella framework', loading just the framework is the equivalent of
> loading all the individual libraries, that is all their symbols are
> available directly from the framework.  It's just for image formats,
> and they include GIF, PNG, JPEG, JPEG2000, Xpm and TIFF.  Mostly I
> just wanted to avoid the clutter of many small frameworks.  If this
> doesn't work out, I'll think about doing individual frameworks.  The
> individual libraries are still available within the package for use
> as normal libraries.
>
> - PROJ framework - a big problem was the datum grid files.  The NAD
> grids are constructed at build-time from source ASCII tables, thus
> making them specific to an architecture for endianess.  I patched
> PROJ so that it will read little-endian grid files on both PPC and
> Intel Macs, and do byte-swapping on PPC Macs.
>
> - GEOS framework - the default here is the C API, not C++.  The
> normal C++ library is available as well.  I need to look into the
> possibility of packaging both as an umbrella framework, like the
> UnixImageIO, then both would be available with a single -framework
> GEOS option.  I'm not sure if having C and C++ in the same library
> will cause problems or not.
>
> - GDAL framework - This is similar in scope to the UnixImageIO
> 'umbrella' framework, but not an umbrella FW.  All the support
> libraries for the various formats are embedded in the package and can
> be used in the normal library capacity by themselves.
>
>
> To make them more easily used in Unix porting, there is a 'unix'
> subfolder in the package that will behave as a normal /usr/local sort
> of prefix, so most configure scripts should work without changes.
>
> The exception would be the UnixImageIO framework.  Used as a
> framework, configure would have to be changed so that all tests for
> the various image libraries test the same '-framework UnixImageIO'.
> But in a pinch, the 'unix' subfolder could still be used to get the
> individual libraries.
>
>
> To go along with these frameworks, there is a new GRASS build
> available.  First, it uses the frameworks above (installed
> separately).  And, it's a double-clickable, drag-n-drop installable,
> Mac application, and of course Universal.  It can be installed
> anywhere, it's not fixed to /Applications and nothing else is
> installed in other locations (like /usr/local).  I decided for now on
> using Abracode's OnMyCommand Droplet as the base for the
> application.  It simply fires up a Terminal to start GRASS in the
> standard CLI way, including starting the GUI (in X11 or Aqua, however
> you have your preference, but it defaults to X11).
>
> One big problem I had to work out - the stroked font files.  Like the
> PROJ datum files, they are constructed at build time.  I did the same
> kind of patch - font files are fixed at little-endian, and the font
> loading routine byte-swaps on a PPC.
>
>
> The frameworks are mostly movable, given the right processing.  They
> could be altered to be embeddable in another .app package.  Library
> locations are handled by using install_name_tool to change them to
> relative paths.  I'm not sure about GDAL plugins yet.  Other data
> paths have environment and funtion controls to set them.
>
> But, I didn't do this for GRASS since that defeats part of the
> purpose of having libraries or frameworks in known, standard
> locations - reduced duplication, easier to update all applications.
> Why bloat BOTH GRASS and QGIS by 90MB?  And MapServer and PostGIS
> don't really have (and won't have) an application package to put them
> in.
>
>
> All the utilities that come with the various libraries are also
> available in the Programs subfolder of the framework.  It may mean
> more in your shell PATH, but they're there.
>
>
> Next, I'll work on rebuilding QGIS to make use of the frameworks.
> Which will make another good test to help iron out usability issues
> of the frameworks.
>
> When they are stabilized, I intend to replace my current /usr/local-
> based installers with the frameworks and switch over Mapserver, PHP
> and Postgres+PostGIS to use them.  I may then work on making them
> Panther compatible if there is enough interest.
>
>
> That's it for now, but I may have forgotten something.  Try them
> out.  They won't get in the way of the standard installers, and are
> easily removed if desired.  Comments welcome and encouraged.
>
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
>
> "This is a question about the past, is it? ... How can I tell that
> the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy
> between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"
>
> - The Ruler of the Universe
>
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-- 
Tim Sutton

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