Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

coconut · Mar 11, 2001, 08:59 AM

I use a lot of CLI UNIX apps at my research lab, and I was hoping to port some of these tools to OS X. I'm not much of a programmer, althought I have followed some computer programming courses.

Can somebody point me to useful litterature to port UNIX CLI apps ?

Oh yeah, there's also 1 or 2 X-Window apps too, but I guess that would be too hard...

Thanks !

sadie · Mar 11, 2001, 07:29 PM

If you have the source code to these tools, and they just use plain C or similar, then porting them should be extremely simple. Pull up a terminal and compile them in the same way you would in any other unix, except for a few annoying changes - for example, gcc has become cc, etc. On occasion, you may need to fiddle with makefiles to get it to work.

If you haven't yet tried to compile them under unix, then learn how to do that on the ideal environment before playing around with all the subtle changes in OS X.

As with all sorts of things both under and above the hood, this is likly to change in two weeks (bites nails), so if you run into any trouble leave it on the bench and try again with X.0

As for windows apps, there will be such a thing as Virtual PC.

tea4u · Mar 11, 2001, 07:59 PM

As for windows apps, there will be such a thing as Virtual PC.

I think he (she?) was referring to X-Windows not MS-Windows...

coconut wrote:
Oh yeah, there's also 1 or 2 X-Window apps too, but I guess that would be too hard...

Look at this page http://mrcla.com/XonX/ and judge yourself if it works for you.

But, as sadie mentioned, I think you should wait until "Real Thing (TM)" comes out as things will drastically, if not completely, change from the beta to the released.

[This message has been edited by tea4u (edited 03-11-2001).]

coconut · Mar 11, 2001, 09:50 PM

Yes, I was referring to an X-Window app. I know how to compile UNIX source, but I was asking myself if some complicated stuff had to be done to the source code, especially if apps make use of features like accessing databases over the Internet or the local Intranet.

When I take a look at places like the GUN-darwin page at sourceforge.net, plenty of people are posting binaries, so I guess that it isn't that easy if people are getting some recognition for porting apps.

And i also heard that porting GIMP was a pain in the ass, so I guess my DNA sequence assembly progs won't be that easy neither.

tie · Mar 16, 2001, 12:04 AM

I think the difficulty of porting is highly dependent on the program. It is definitely worth trying because it could be very easy. I didn't think there was any difference between networking code (sockets, etc) but I could be wrong.

Wixar · Mar 16, 2001, 12:26 AM

I've compiled several Unix apps...mySQL, PHP4, Apache, ProFTP. I've had to make some minimal changes to the source code for ProFTP and mySQL. The others ones compiled without any problems.

A neat way to give a GUI to a Unix CLI app on Mac OS X is to use the NSPipe Foundation class in Cocoa. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I imagine it would be a very simple, easy way of getting a GUI for a CLI app.

-Peter

persquare · Mar 16, 2001, 03:59 AM

I've found that most programs are easy to port e.g. Nedit (including LessTif for XTools) and science stuff like Scilab (Matlab clone, didn't get graphics to work properly). Still, my advice would be to wait for the tools released with OS X v1.0 since there will be big differences (in a positive way) compared to PB Tools.
/P

Lars -1 · Mar 16, 2001, 11:34 AM

Have a look at O'Reilly's "Porting UNIX Software". There's nothing in there for OSX, I'm sure, but a lot of points are valid here too. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/port/

cu
Lars

Gavin · Mar 20, 2001, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by Wixar:

A neat way to give a GUI to a Unix CLI app on Mac OS X is to use the NSPipe Foundation class in Cocoa. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I imagine it would be a very simple, easy way of getting a GUI for a CLI app.

-Peter

I did just that for apachectl, it was pretty easy:

here's the source

http://miltonshole.thespacemonkey.co...hecontrol.html

MacGorilla · Mar 25, 2001, 10:24 AM

I am trying to get the Gimp to work on Mac OS X Final. I have Tenon's latest X Tools and I must say its a big pain in the you-know-where. Anybody have any suggestions?

Angus_D · Mar 25, 2001, 02:09 PM

See this thread, scroll down and read my post about porting apps. The easiest thing for you is to just install fink.