In the process of installing Panther from scratch, I decided to use DarwinPorts. It’s a packaging system for the abundant UNIX free software available on Mac OS X. I had previously used Fink which, while being an admirable project, seemed a little opaque to me. I never quite knew where data was being installed and which locations were being searched to see if prerequisites were present. Darwinports seems to be a little better at finding programs/libraries that are already installed. I freely admit my ignorance in this matter, though. It may simply be that I understand Darwinports better than I did Fink, but that, in itself is an important criteria.

Here are the ports that I currently have installed:

[02:17:13 vinod]:~ $ port installed The following ports are installed:
     gettext-0.10.40
     keychain-2.0.3
     mutt-1.4.2.1
     offlineimap-4.0.0
     readline-4.3
     urlview-0.9
     wget-1.9.1

All of the above ports are available from darwinports except offlineimap. I built that one myself. Here is the Portfile for offlineimap:

[02:18:42 vinod]:~/dports-dev/mail/offlineimap $ cat Portfile 
# $Id: $  PortSystem          1.0 
name                offlineimap 
version             4.0.0 
categories          mail 
maintainers         vinod@kurup.org 
platforms           darwin 
homepage            http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/offlineimap 
description         IMAP/Maildir synchronization and reader support 
long_description    OfflineIMAP is a tool to simplify your e-mail reading. With OfflimeIMAP, you can:   
                    * Read the same mailbox from multiple computers, and have your     
                      changes (deletions, etc.) be automatically reflected on     
                      all computers   
                    * Use various mail clients to read a single mail box   
                    * Read mail while offline (on a laptop) and have all changes     
                      synchronized when you get connected again   
                    * Read IMAP mail with mail readers that do not support IMAP   
                    * Use SSL (secure connections) to read IMAP mail even if your reader     
                      doesn't support SSL   
                    * Synchronize your mail using a completely safe and fault-tolerant     
                      algorithm.  (At least I think it is!)   
                    * Customize which mailboxes to synchronize with regular expressions     
                      or lists.   
                    * Synchronize your mail two to four times faster than with other tools     
                      or other mail readers' internal IMAP support.  In short, OfflineIMAP 
                      is a tool to let you read mail how YOU want to.   
distname            ${name}_${version} 
master_sites        http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/offlineimap/ 
checksums           md5 13e355c8a957dddfe9b7486821d83370  
depends_lib         bin:python2.3:python23  
# tarball extracts as offlineimap, not offlineimap-4.0.0 
worksrcdir          ${name}  
use_configure       no  
build.cmd           python setup.py 
build.target        build  
destroot.cmd        python setup.py 
destroot.destdir    --prefix=${destroot}${prefix}  
post-destroot {         # remind user to define/add installed path to python path         
                        ui_msg " be sure the install path is included in your python path:"
                        # FIXME: hardcoding 2.3 isn't right here         
                        ui_msg "tcsh: setenv PYTHONPATH $PYTHONPATH:${prefix}/lib/python2.3/site-packages"         
                        ui_msg "bash: export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:${prefix}/lib/python2.3/site-packages"          
                        xinstall -d -m 755 ${destroot}${prefix}/share/doc/${name}         
                        xinstall -m 644 -W ${worksrcpath} manual.html manual.pdf manual.ps
                                 manual.txt ChangeLog COPYING COPYRIGHT UPGRADING
                                 ${destroot}${prefix}/share/doc/${name}         
                        xinstall -d -m 755 ${destroot}${prefix}/share/doc/${name}/examples
                        xinstall -m 644 -W ${worksrcpath} offlineimap.conf offlineimap.conf.minimal                  
                                 ${destroot}${prefix}/share/doc/${name}/examples
                        install -m 644 -W ${worksrcpath} offlineimap.1
                                ${destroot}${prefix}/share/man/man1 }

I haven’t submitted this to the darwinports project yet because they recommend installing the software on a fresh Mac OS X install to be sure that you’ve correctly specified any dependencies. I haven’t had time to do that yet. I hope to, though, because I find the port system to be very intuitive. Building an OpenACS port on Mac OS X seems doable, but I need to look into how upgrades are handled. Walter McGinnis has sent me his instructions for building an OpenACS installation using darwinports, but I think we can make it easier, by building simple Portfiles for each of the required pieces. Here are Walter’s detailed instructions:

# install darwinports 
# see instructions on darwinports.com # using openacs-head for server name for convoluted reasons... 
# i also use ~/Development/web rather than /var/lib/aolserver for my 
# server source 
# darwinports working directories under ~/Development/darwinports/ 
# you need to add /opt/local/bin or something to your path in .bash_profile 
# for the port command to work 
# see darwinports install doc for details
Delphy:~ walter$ sudo port -v -d install postgresql
Password: ...
Delphy:~ walter$ pwd
/Users/walter
Delphy:~ walter$ cd /opt/local/
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ mkdir pgsql
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ mkdir pgsql/data
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ sudo chown -R walter:staff pgsql
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ initdb -D pgsql/data
...
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ pg_ctl -D pgsql/data -l logfile start
postmaster successfully started
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ createlang plpgsql template1
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ createdb openacs-head
CREATE DATABASE
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ createuser openacs-head
Shall the new user be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new user be allowed to create more new users? (y/n) y
CREATE USER
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ sudo port -v -d install aolserver
... 
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ cd ~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo port -v -d install wget
Password: ... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo wget http://twtelecom.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/aolserver/nscache-1.5.tar.gz
Password: ... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo wget http://twtelecom.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/aolserver/nspostgres-4.0.tar.gz
...
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo wget http://twtelecom.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/aolserver/nssha1-0.1.tar.gz
... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/aolserver login
Password:  (Logging in to anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net)
CVS password: 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/aolserver co nsrewrite
... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ sudo tar xvfz nscache-1.5.tar.gz ; sudo tar xvfz nssha1-0.1.tar.gz ; sudo tar xvfz nspostgres-4.0.tar.gz
... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ cd nscache-1.5 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nscache-1.5 walter$ NSHOME=..; export NSHOME 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nscache-1.5 walter$ sudo make install
... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nscache-1.5 walter$ cd ../nsrewrite/ 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nsrewrite walter$ sudo make install
... 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nsrewrite walter$ cd .. 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0 walter$ cd nssha1-0.1 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nssha1-0.1 walter$ sudo make install 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nssha1-0.1 walter$ cd ../nspostgres-4.0 
# edit the Makefile from:
# < MODLIBS   = -L$(PGLIB) -lpq
# to
# MODLIBS   = -L$(PGLIB) -lpq -lnsdb 
Delphy:~/Development/darwinports/dports/www/aolserver/work/aolserver-4.0/nspostgres-4.0 walter$ sudo make install POSTGRES=/opt/local ACS=1
... 
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ cd /opt/local 
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ sudo mkdir src
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ sudo chmod 775 src  
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ wget http://www.tdom.org/tDOM-0.7.8.tar.gz
...
Delphy:/opt/local walter$ cd src/
Delphy:/opt/local/src walter$ tar xvfz ../tDOM-0.7.8.tar.gz 
Delphy:/opt/local/src walter$ rm ../tDOM-0.7.8.tar.gz
Delphy:/opt/local/src walter$ cd tDOM-0.7.8/ 
Delphy:/opt/local/src/tDOM-0.7.8 walter$ cd unix/
Delphy:/opt/local/src/tDOM-0.7.8/unix walter$ ../configure --enable-threads --disable-tdomalloc --prefix=/opt/local/aolserver 
Delphy:/opt/local/src/tDOM-0.7.8/unix walter$ sudo make install
... 
Delphy:/opt/local/src/tDOM-0.7.8/unix walter$ cd
Delphy:~ walter$ cd Development/
Delphy:~/Development walter$ mkdir web
Delphy:~/Development walter$ cd web 
Delphy:~/Development/web walter$ cvs -z3 -d walterg@openacs.org:/cvsroot co acs-core
password: ... 
# i move the openacs code to openacs-head
# mv openacs-4 openacs-head
# edit openacs-head/etc/config.tcl to be localhost, etc
! set hostname                  localhost
! set address                   127.0.0.1 
! set server                    "openacs-head"  
set servername                "New OpenACS Installation - Development" 
! set serverroot                "/Users/walter/Development/web/${server}" 
Delphy:~/Development/web/openacs-head walter$ /opt/local/aolserver/bin/nsd -ft ~/Development/web/openacs-head/etc/config.tcl

I think Fink and Darwinports can coexist since Fink is installed in /sw and Darwinports in /opt/local, but I’m sticking with Darwinports alone, for now.