Installing software on new Laptop
The new laptop runs Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).
I have never intended to log in as guest, so I don't have to worry about the bug in the news.
Normal apps mostly install and run fine (though not aMSN).
Problems occur when I am trying to install libraries, and other shared objects. Versions available for download mostly support the ppc and i386 architectures, while OSX 10.6 supports i386 and x86_64 (aka amd64). On my laptop it will run the x86_64 version, and will then fail to load downloaded libraries. So I have compiled Python and python modules I want by hand and all the libraries that those python modules need, making sure I get an x86_64 or dual i386/x86_64 version of each. I wanted to have a version of pygtk using the native OSX version of gtk, but gtk+osx depends on the old Carbon graphics interface, which is not available as a 64 bit interface. Can I tell the OS to run python in 32 bit mode, since the executable contains a 32 bit version as well as the 64 bit version.
OpenMPI is useful to have for debugging parallel code. The 'configure' tool comes up with compiler flags that don't work, which I don't seem to be able to override, and fails to complete the configuration. I don't think I need to do any MPI debugging in the near future, so I am not going to try to debug the many 1000 lines of machine generated sh code that is the configure script.
I think I have got working versions of what I most need for now.
I have never intended to log in as guest, so I don't have to worry about the bug in the news.
Normal apps mostly install and run fine (though not aMSN).
Problems occur when I am trying to install libraries, and other shared objects. Versions available for download mostly support the ppc and i386 architectures, while OSX 10.6 supports i386 and x86_64 (aka amd64). On my laptop it will run the x86_64 version, and will then fail to load downloaded libraries. So I have compiled Python and python modules I want by hand and all the libraries that those python modules need, making sure I get an x86_64 or dual i386/x86_64 version of each. I wanted to have a version of pygtk using the native OSX version of gtk, but gtk+osx depends on the old Carbon graphics interface, which is not available as a 64 bit interface. Can I tell the OS to run python in 32 bit mode, since the executable contains a 32 bit version as well as the 64 bit version.
OpenMPI is useful to have for debugging parallel code. The 'configure' tool comes up with compiler flags that don't work, which I don't seem to be able to override, and fails to complete the configuration. I don't think I need to do any MPI debugging in the near future, so I am not going to try to debug the many 1000 lines of machine generated sh code that is the configure script.
I think I have got working versions of what I most need for now.