Compiling method and mysql on OSX

[Benjamin Martens]

Hi John,

What is onerous is setting up the build environment and hunting down
all of the dependencies.  I've spent about 4-5 hours on it so far, and
unfortunately as it is my wife's laptop, I can have it for big chunks
to fully chase everything down at once.

It is nice having the script for jhbuild to follow, but unfortunately
it often seems to throw an error ('failed') rather than prompt and
download the required dependency.

Currently my process is:  Try and compile.  Lots of text across the
terminal, wait 5-10 minutes as it works, then I get a failed message.
I look back, find what has caused this.  Find out what package that
application was supposed to be in, and see if it is installed already
in a different than expected location.  Install that dependency in
jhbuild.  Try again, and then hunt down the next problem.

I have heard that homebrew is much better in downloading dependencies,
and while the guys at Apple don't really like 'unsupported' external
build environments, this one was better than the others (from this
friend's personal experience).

As I look further into it, it looks like the reason jhbuild is used is
as gtk-osx requires it, and no-one has stepped up to getting gtk-osx
working in homebrew.  It makes sense, then, why gnucash wouldn't use
homebrew at this point.

--

With regards to getting GnuCash installed on OSX, with MySQL enabled,
this is my understanding of the steps.  Please let me know if I am
wrong:

1) Install GnuCash  (may simply use the apropriate (intel vs ppc)
pre-packaged dmg from the gnucash website).
 - easy
 - in looking through the documentation, it seems like you don't have
to compile the application yourself anymore, so it should have the
capability to see the MySQL module when it is added

2) Compile MySQL module
 - complicated
 - requires:
 -- Install MySQL for OSX
 -- Install XTools
 -- Install gtk-osx  (find instructions, follow them for its order /
dependencies / etc)
 -- download .jhbuilrc-custom
 -----  modify the .jhbuildrc-custom script as documented within it to
enable mySQL
 -- run sanitycheck
 -- build the driver:  jhbuild build libdbi-drivers
 --- potentially several dependencies to hunt down and install
  -- should produce the file: libdbdmysql.so

3) Place the driver into: Gnucash.app/Contents/Resources/lib/dbd
 -- should be easy

4) Open GnuCash, open MySQL location, and the rest should work easily.
 - with the awareness that GnuCash is a one-user-at-a-time
application, so only one person should be logged into the MySQL
database at a time.

-------

Thanks for your feedback John!
-Ben


On 9/30/13, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
> On Sep 30, 2013, at 6:07 AM, Benjamin Martens <bdmartens at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have a headless server at home running my MySQL database for
>> gnucash, which I access from my windows laptop.  This all works quite
>> well.  My challenge came up when trying to get my wife and her MacBook
>> Pro (Intel, 64 bit, OSX -Snow Leopard) on to this as well.
>>
>>
>> Having never built for Mac before (I have some background in Linux, as
>> well as Windows), I'm sure I've done several things the long way, but
>> jhbuild seems to be quite onerous when it comes to dependencies.
>> Being 64-bit certainly doesn't help with this either, nor does having
>> OSX 10.6.8 installed on that laptop.  I don't have a 32 bit machine to
>> build on.
>>
>>
>> Someone I know at Apple asked me why jhbuild was being used (as he had
>> many similar problems with dependencies with it in the past in his own
>> projects), rather than something like homebrew, which handles
>> dependencies much better.
>>
>>
>> My question:  Has there been much thought/discussion into this?   Is
>> it an issue of needing motivated individuals to implement the switch,
>> or is there a reason why jhbuild is better for the task?
>>
>
> What's "onerous" about jhbuild's handling of dependencies? How exactly is
> Homebrew
> better, especially considering that everything is already set up with
> jhbuild?
> What problems are you having?
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>