[Pythonmac-SIG] Solution to some SWIG Install problems on Mac OS X

Christopher Barker Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
Tue Dec 13 18:25:46 CET 2005


Hi Lou,

I'm glad you got this working. Thanks for posting the resolution to your 
problems, it's good to have this stuff archived. If time permits, I hope top 
do some SWIGing myself, so perhaps we can help each other out.

On Thursday 08 December 2005 1:17 pm, Louis Pecora wrote:

>    Solution:  directories (folders) and files with spaces and special
> Mac symbols (e.g. option-whatever) can cause problems.

Yup. Technically, a file name on *nix can have any charactor in it except a 
"/", so many utilities use space to separate things that it's hard for things 
to work right with them in there. I spend most of my time on Linux, so I'm 
not in the habit of using spaces in file names anyway.

> setenv CC g++
>
> in my login file .tschrc which I got from a colleague.

The dangers of borrowing other people's code! Why are you using tsch anyway? 
bash really is nicer, unless you're really used to a C shell. And it's the 
OS-X default (and most Linuxes also).

Setting CC to g++ is a very odd thing to do. It's going to break a lot of make 
files, CC should be a C compiler!

> I changed it to 
> setenv CC gcc

You should probably just not set it to anything. gcc should be the default 
anyway. On my system, /usr/bin/CC is a link to gcc-3.3

> (3) running 'make install' would not work since I had no permission to
> write in some directories. I don't fully understand this since I am the
> admin and I was running logged in as such, but to no avail.
>     Solution:  run this as
>
> sudo make install

This is VERY standard stuff. I think I recall you're having a hard time 
transitioning to the multi-user environment of OS-X a few years back, and 
having some discussion about it on the MacPython list...or maybe that was 
someone else.

OS-X has the best system for dealing with this I've seen. By default, it is 
set up so that it is impossible to be logged in as the root user (unix talk 
for system administrator). This is a good thing, as the root user can do 
anything, and it's remarkable easy to make a mess of your system with a typo 
at the command line. Also, if you're the root user and you acidentally run 
some malicious code, it can reek havock (not such an issue for OS-X as 
Windows, but still an issue).

However, obviously some things do need to be done with root privileges. This 
is what sudo (Super User Do) is. It lets you run a single command as the root 
user. This is good, as it lets you get what you need done, but it makes it 
very clear that "I am now messing with the system" you can't do it 
accidentally. When working from the GUI, whenever you need to do something 
that requires root privileges, a dialog is popped up, asking for your 
password. Again a clear sign that you are messing with the system. If you 
were to download a virus accidentally as an email, a dialog would pop up and 
ask you for your password, and you know immediately that something was going 
on you didn't expect.

So, on OS-X being an "admin" user only means that you are allowed to use sudo.

Contrast this with Windows: an "admin" user can do anything, including 
accidentally run a virus or something that destroys theire system. However, 
if you run as a non-admin user, then you can't do anything administrative 
without loggin out, l then back in as the admin. This is a such a pain that 
many people just run as admin user all the time. couple this with poorly 
written software that requires you to run as an admin user (we have some of 
this in-house!) and hardly anyone doesn't run as an admin user, and surprise 
surprise! viruses galore!

Wow! I got carried away with that!

> At least I got this far.

I'll be interested in what you come up with, I think our needs are similar.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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Chris.Barker at noaa.gov


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