[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] OSX build - ancient!

[David Bruce]

Hi Caroline,

On 10/26/09, Caroline Ford <caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi guys
>
> I've just tested tuxmath and tuxtype after finding out that tuxpaint won't
> start on MacOS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard.
>
> tuxmath is fine (YAY!) but the tuxtype build we seem to be shipping seems to
> be ancient.

Yep

> The file is called tuxtype_w_fonts-1.5-17-MacOS10.3PPC. I'd have to install
> Rosetta to run the old PowerPC software.
>
> Our current windows build is 1.7.5!
>
> Looking at the releases page (https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31080)
> we do have a build suitable for MacIntel - the Universal Binary which would
> run on both Intel Mac and PowerPC. TuxType 1.5.17 - OS-X 10.4+
> Universal<https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31080&release_id=1158>Could
> the menu link to that instead?

That would be much better, although it isn't any more current a build
of tuxtype.

> Do we need to find a new Mac packager?

Anyone volunteering?  I haven't exactly been deluged with Mac folks
clamoring to do OSX builds for the project.

>
> Also the website has grammatical errors on the download page.
> "Either you love it or your hate it, but it is unforgettable Mac OS X.".

I think we should ditch the editorializing about different OS
platforms on our downloads page - it doesn't seem very professional.
Let's just say "Mac OS X".

>
> The Debian-based should probably say Ubuntu too. In Ubuntu's case it would
> be sudo apt-get install tuxtype or find it though the software centre.

Well, aptitude is preferred over apt-get because it better tracks
automatically installed packages (although I think that Ubuntu may
have added this capacity to apt-get recently), so it is a better
practice to suggest aptitude.  I would hope that Ubuntu users know
that their distribution is based on Debian and that they need to use
sudo for system administration tasks, but maybe I shouldn't assume
anything about that user base.  At least we will be able to forget
about "tuxtype-data-nonfree" in the near future.

>
> The website mentions macports without saying what it is or where you find
> it.

At one point I'm pretty sure that was a link to
http://www.macports.org - some of the links in the text from the "old"
site are now just text.

>I've googled and found:
> http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/games/tuxtype/Portfile which
> says we have 1.7.4. Can we have this available for download?

Basically, I can build an intel-only dmg with macports without any
problems.  The difficulty comes in building "universal" (intel/ppc)
binaries, because libsdl_pango doesn't build correctly as universal.
Also, Apple doesn't make it very feasible to build binaries that
reliably work on multiple OS-X versions.

So the short answer is, I can definitely post intel-only Mac builds
when the new versions of tuxmath and tuxtype come out (which I think
we should call 1.8.0).

Best,

David
David