MacOS X building instructions

[abligh]

The above options seem to have done the trick. The make completed without additional errors.

The resulting executable is huge: 784 MB. I've tried executing it, but so far all it's done is generate a couple dozen lines of debugging info. Although it hasn't terminated (it stills shows up in ps), there's no sign of life; even the debug comments have stopped. I'm uploading a file with the captured debug output, in case anyone can make sense of it.

The size is probably debugging symbols. Mine is "only" 147Mb.

In order to execute it successfully, you need to put it into a MacOS "bundle". I think this is pretty easy (some sort of mkdir with permissions and a copy). I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's something like this:
mkdir -p XaraLX.app/Contents/MacOS
cp xaralx XaraLX.app/Contents/MacOS

then
open XaraLX.app

I have no experience with the Linux version .. I only learned of Xara two days ago, but it sounded like a potential alternative to commercial programs like Adobe Illustrator. I had already shelled out for the Windows version of AI and was reluctant to do it again now that I've switched to the Mac world.

Re endian: I'm attempting to build Xara LX on an Intel-based Macbook. I assume the endianness is the same as for Linux on Intel machines.

Yes it is. You should have less difficulty here. I'm just saying it's early stages building for the Mac. But don't get me wrong, we appreciate people building it and testing it!

(you can, BTW, build wx for gtk if you install gtk on the Mac. Xtreme should then build fine but you will have a gtk interface not a Mac interface which is not what you want I presume...).

Alex

[gpetty]

The size is probably debugging symbols. Mine is "only" 147Mb.

In order to execute it successfully, you need to put it into a MacOS "bundle". I think this is pretty easy (some sort of mkdir with permissions and a copy). I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's something like this:
mkdir -p XaraLX.app/Contents/MacOS
cp xaralx XaraLX.app/Contents/MacOS

then
open XaraLX.app

Three steps forward, one(?) step back.

Now that I understand what a bundle is ... it turns out the build automatically creates a folder XaraLX.app and associated subdirectories in the build directory. So all I had to do is mv the executable to ~/XaraLX/XaraLX.app/Contents/MacOS. I then used finder to open it, and voila ... it started up with a normal GUI. Initially it complained about something with fonts and then about not having ImageMagick 6.0, but these seemed not to be fatal errors.

But then disaster .. I simply clicked on the drawing window, and the program complained about a "very serious error" and said that it would have to close. Fortunately, it gave me the opportunity to generate an error report, which I have attached here.

(you can, BTW, build wx for gtk if you install gtk on the Mac. Xtreme should then build fine but you will have a gtk interface not a Mac interface which is not what you want I presume...).

Alex

I'm too new to Macs to have any interface loyalty .. and i have no idea what the gtk interface is like. My prior experience is primarily with the Windows GUI and the Unix command line. If I continue to have problems getting a working Mac interface, I might like to take a look at the gtk version.

[gpetty]

Incidentally, the complaint about missing ImageMagick 6.0 seems spurious. I've investigated and found that I have exactly one version of ImageMagick installed --- version 6.1.8 -- and the executables are present in /sw/bin.

I'm not sure how to tell Xtreme to look for it there.

[abligh]

Incidentally, the complaint about missing ImageMagick 6.0 seems spurious. I've investigated and found that I have exactly one version of ImageMagick installed --- version 6.1.8 -- and the executables are present in /sw/bin.

I'm not sure how to tell Xtreme to look for it there.

Ensure it is on your path, or in your preferences (when you've got it to run once, and then quit, you will have a .xaralx/preferences in your home directory), put this:
ImageMagickPath=/sw/bin/convert
replacing the existing line

Alex

[gpetty]

Ensure it is on your path, or in your preferences (when you've got it to run once, and then quit, you will have a .xaralx/preferences in your home directory), put this:
ImageMagickPath=/sw/bin/convert
replacing the existing line

Alex

It is in my path ... for the shell I use (tchs). But I just realized I have no idea how the Finder passes paths to the applications it opens, since it (presumably) doesn't pay any attention to my preferred shell.

[abligh]

Initially it complained about something with fonts

That would be the "we haven't written the font manager interface for the Mac yet" bug :-) (actually I'm not sure why it shouldn't work if you have pango installed, as that's all we use...)

and then about not having ImageMagick 6.0, but these seemed not to be fatal errors.

Harmless

But then disaster .. I simply clicked on the drawing window, and the program complained about a "very serious error" and said that it would have to close. Fortunately, it gave me the opportunity to generate an error report, which I have attached here.

OK, interesting. I would guess that this is CCamView::GetFrame() (in HandleDragScrolling) returnning a NULL. That method is inherited from wxView, and as far as I can tell it isn't meant to do that (ever) for an MDI-esque wxView.

What happens if you start it from the command line (with Open I suppose) and pass it one of the designs? Does it render anything useful?

It might be better to have this discussion on the dev list (see http://www.xaraxtreme.org/community/) by the way, there are more Mac folks there. I'm not sure they are a huge amount further forward than you though...

Alex

[gpetty]

What happens if you start it from the command line (with Open I suppose) and pass it one of the designs? Does it render anything useful?

Assuming I did it correctly ("open XaraLX.app"), it does the following:
1) brings up the splash logo
2) provides only two headings on the top menu bar: XaraLX and Help (this is in contrast to the case that I open it by clicking on the icon, when I got a full suite of menus)
3) stubbornly fails to quit when told to do so.
4) chews up CPU cycles until killed from the command line.

It might be better to have this discussion on the dev list (see http://www.xaraxtreme.org/community/) by the way, there are more Mac folks there. I'm not sure they are a huge amount further forward than you though...

Alex

Fair enough .. I 'll check it out.

[gpetty]

Harmless

You wrote this in response to my comment about it not finding ImageMagick. But interestingly, that initial failure to find it explains the difference in behavior I got when I started the program from the command line versus opening it via the GUI.

Recall that when I tried to start it from the command line, the program displayed the splash logo and then immediately became unresponsive. It was using the CPU fully and it was failing to quit when asked to do so.

My initial experience opening it via the GUI, on the other hand, was that it opened fine, though it failed to find ImageMagick, and then crashed only when I tried to do something in the drawing window.

I opened it a second time and then closed it without doing anything else in order to create a preferences file, which I then edited to give the path to ImageMagick. I then found that when I opened it again via the GUI, it behaved exactly the same as when I had previously executed it from the command line (for which paths to ImageMagick were defined by my shell).

In other words, it is ImageMagick, most likely convert (since that appeared in the ps listing) that caused Xtreme to hang on start-up. I just thought this behavior might be significant to somebody. Clearly I will have to disable the path to IM again in order to successfully start Xtreme again, unless someone can suggest another fix.

It might be better to have this discussion on the dev list (see http://www.xaraxtreme.org/community/) by the way, there are more Mac folks there. I'm not sure they are a huge amount further forward than you though...

Alex

Since I haven't received the email with registration confirmation for that forum yet (I'm not sure whether a delay is normal or not), I'll just continue posting here for now.

Also, I may have to at least temporarly scale back my efforts to get Xtreme working, because I just discovered, and successfully installed, the package Inkscape, which looks like it might accomplish most of what I was looking for in a drawing package.

Thanks to both Ben and Alex for your efforts on behalf of getting Xtreme running on my Mac ... I'll try to stay tuned for news on this front.

I guess one thing I never found out is whether *anyone* out there has a more or less functioning copy of Xtreme running on an Intel-based Mac?

regards,
Grant

[BPFowler]

I [have] just discovered, and successfully installed, the package Inkscape, which looks like it might accomplish most of what I was looking for in a drawing package.

The package Inkscape runs under the X Windows System (the GTK that we heard about earlier), and this does not suit everyone.

I guess one thing I never found out is whether *anyone* out there has a more or less functioning copy of Xtreme running on an Intel-based Mac?

I am fairly sure that I could create a Xara LX deliverable for Mac Intel (UB) in about half a day's work - if I had access to an Intel Mac, but it would likely still be a minefield of various Mac specific problems, so it would be 'more or less' functioning only in the most literal sense of that phrase. I really couldn't advance such a product for doing useful work, but Inkscape is used by thousands of people for diagrams, logos, icons, user interface mock-ups web page mock-ups and all forms of computer art.

I do assure you that that the Linux edition of the Xara LX is held in high regard, and we expect that it only a matter of time and continued effort before the Mac version reaches parity with it; and of course, your comments and the account of your experiences has indeed been a help and stimulus!

Thank you.

Ben.

[kattkieru]

Heya all,

I figured I'd keep this going with my experience, in case someone's listening.

I built Xara without any difficulties at all, first try, by following the XCode instructions on the site. Now, I'm running XCode 2.3 on a PowerBook G4 (1.25 gig of ram) with fink 0.80 and OSX 10.4.7. Because of Blender I also have my gcc set to v3.3; this might make a difference.

Anyway, compiled fine with very few issues; the biggest problem was that I ran out of hard disk space. (After building, the total size of all compiled object files and the executable is 1.84 gig. That's insane.) Lemme hit you up with a few screen shots:

http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/xara...25/splash1.jpg
http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/xara...n-windows1.jpg
http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/xara...lock-file1.jpg

First run was much as stated above -- I got windows, and the menus are built, but Xara->About did nothing and any attempt to use a tool caused a crash. On reload of the program I got the lock file message above. I tried deleting the .xara-xtreme folder and restarting, but that didn't seem to have any effect.

I get the imagemagick error on every load, but I only got the font error on first load. Also, I'd like to attach the console output:

[Debug] 21:09:58: Launching: convert
[Debug] 21:09:58: wxMacExecute Bad bundle: convert
[Debug] 21:09:58: pid=22040
[Debug] 21:09:58: no task_for_pid()
[Debug] 21:09:58: Process ended
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD 1', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD 1', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD .', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD 2', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD 2', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:30: Unrecognized accel key 'NUMPAD *', accel string ignored.
[Debug] 21:10:55: ../src/mac/carbon/bitmap.cpp(229): assert "m_rawAccessCount == 0" failed.
[Debug] 21:22:56: Launching: convert
[Debug] 21:22:56: wxMacExecute Bad bundle: convert
[Debug] 21:22:56: pid=22047
[Debug] 21:22:56: Successfully added notification to the runloop
[Debug] 21:22:56: Process ended
[Debug] 21:23:47: Launching: convert
[Debug] 21:23:47: wxMacExecute Bad bundle: convert
[Debug] 21:23:47: pid=22057
[Debug] 21:23:47: Successfully added notification to the runloop
[Debug] 21:24:36: Process ended
Aug 25 21:24:36 starbuck crashdump[22058]: XaraLX crashed
Aug 25 21:24:38 starbuck crashdump[22058]: crash report written to: /Users/*****/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/XaraLX.crash.log

Some of that's repeated from multiple launches. The thing eating up all processor cycles seems to be the crash reporter; let it run long enough and Xara crashes properly, with the log written out. For the curious the log from the above is available at http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/xara....crash.log.zip -- wasn't sure if people wanted me attaching it here.

Things about the build that I noticed right off the bat:
- Two windows -- wxWindows is attempting to set up an MDI interface which is basically not possible / not preferred on the Mac. Once it stops crashing and starts displaying icons that's the first thing that needs to be fixed.
- The icons -- is that part of the endian troubles that were mentioned? I thought I'd read that the icons are 32-bit .png files, in which case endian troubles don't make any sense. (I've compiled the same code using libpng on both PC and Mac and run across no problems.) Unless the icons are put into those .xar files? I haven't really given it more than a five-minute look.
- The splash screen says Linux Edition. Mac version should say Mac Edition, in my opinion. (I won't go into how the color scheme makes me think of the good old CGA days, either. ^_^; )

Anyway, I'd like to play with it more. Where's a good place to start for Mac folks? Are there any code primers?

~ Charles