kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/07/2014 02:17 AM, jp charras wrote:
> Le 07/05/2014 05:07, Jean-Paul Louis a écrit :
>> Hi Marco,
>>
>> I just finished building BZR4854 according to your instructions, and
>> still kicad does not work properly on OSX.
>>
>> See screen capture below.
>> I remember exchanging emails with Dick in this mailing list, and there was a fix for that, but it was never applied to the source code for OS X on the repository. 
>>
>> The behavior of the kicad buttons is still not consistent. the first three (3) using kiface symlink are working fine, but the other four (4) are not.
>> So we have three separate behaviors.
>> Buttons 1, 2 and 3 are fine (thanks to symlink).
>> Buttons 4, 5 and 6 start the application minimized, so we need to go to the dock, and click on the icon to open the app window.
>> Button 7 does not work as the app (pl_editor) open and close immediately.
>>
>> Please see Dick for his insights on how to fix it. He was very helpful to me when you were not responding to the issues. I will be back home after May 12th, so I will have more time to give you feedback inn the new builds.
>>
>> Last, I am not sure how to install properly the libraries. Is there a script that will work for OS X? Something that I could add to my script (Bash script BuildKicad-OSX) attached to have everything at once.
>>
>> Thank you for your help.
>>
>> Jean-Paul
>> AC9GH
> 
> I do not know anything to OSX, but it is for me an unix system.
> 
> Therefore I am thinking your script is missing something. in section:
> echo Fixing kicad.app issue with three symlinks to kiface for eeschema,
> cvpcb and pcbnew
> cd ${INSTALL_DIR}/kicad.app/Contents/MacOS/
> ln -s
> ~/Soft_Dev/kicad-build/eeschema/eeschema.app/Contents/MacOS/_eeschema.kiface
> .
> ln -s ~/Soft_Dev/kicad-build/cvpcb/cvpcb.app/Contents/MacOS/_cvpcb.kiface .
> ln -s
> ~/Soft_Dev/kicad-build/pcbnew/pcbnew.app/Contents/MacOS/_pcbnew.kiface .
> 
> Symbolic links are made for eeschema, cvpcb and pcbnew only.
> They are missing for gerbview, pcb_calculator and pl_editor.
> This is strange for me.
> 
> You should have 6 symlinks, not 3.
> 


Currently only those 3 binaries are loaded as kiface files, i.e. in process.  The rest of
the binaries are loaded as new processes, because I was unable to find a compelling reason
not to do so.  They tend to edit files which are not as tightly bound to each other as

*.sch and *.kicad_pcb are.

The problem with the Mac will continue under such circumstances.  When the executable is
launched as a separate process, not an in-process kiface, then the Mac seems shy about
bringing it to the top of the world.

It is not a bug in Kicad, it is a bug in the Mac OS as far as I can see.  It really is of
no interest to me anymore.

Furthermore having OSX scripts do things that the CMakeLists.txt file should be doing is
curious to me.  I really don't care to participate.  AFAIAC, the entire Mac support should
can be kept in a separate branch until the project has an English speaking Mac developer
who can cooperate as part of a team.

There's no reason a single patch file cannot be maintained that overlays a working tree.
These patches are easy to generate simply by doing a diff from the merge of a Mac branch.

My Mac patch handled these issues in the CMakeLists.txt files, where policy like this
should be made.


Dick