Building GnuCash 2.2.2 on Mac OS X without Fink or MacPorts

[Alexander Sotirov]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 08:46:27AM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> If you're going through all this trouble, why not try to build
> the gtk-macosx[1] project instead and get an application that runs
> without X11?

I actually tried that right after I built the X11 version. It wasn't hard,
you just need to set come ./configure options for Cairo and GTK. The
native GnuCash seemed to work, but it didn't look much different from
the X11 version (it didn't use Aqua widgets) and there were a lot of GTK
warnigns and erors on stderr. I didn't test it extensively. Since X11
is available on the OSX installation DVD, it doesn't seem like
it's worth switching to the experimental native port.

> > The detailed instructions, build script and patches are at
> > http://a.sotirov.net/2008/building-gnucash-on-mac-osx/
> 
> Cool!  How hard would it be to take this script and then build
> an installer?

I outlined the main issues in my last email, but I'll summarize
them as TODO items:

1) Remove unneeded files from the destination directory to reduce
the size of the package. Linking the GNOME libraries staticly
would be cool, but that would involve a lot of work (and hacking).

2) Make GnuCash work from any directory. The OSX installation model
is that there is no installer, you just drag the app directory somewhere
and double click to launch it. Jeshua Lacock suggested the /tmp
trick in his email, BinReloc is something else I need to investigate.

3) Build an OSX application that wraps the GnuCash directory and launches
the main executable, so that users get the same installation and launching
experience. This is trivial.

4) Build a fat binary. My current build script doesn't and I have no idea
how hard it would be. I might need to hack the Makefiles for all sources,
but it could be somethinkg much easier. If it's too hard we can just have
two versions for download.

5) Add aqbanking and the other optional packages to the build.

6) Make the build script more robust, right now it has no error handling at
all.

If anybody with a Mac can to help with some of these, I'd appreciate it.


Take care,
Alex
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