OS X

How to install GIT on OS-X in under 5 minutes:

curl http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.4.4.tar.gz -O
tar xzvf  git-1.5.4.4.tar.gz 
cd git-1.5.4.4
make configure 
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
NO_MSGFMT=yes make prefix=/usr/local all
sudo make install

Steve Jobs announced the availability of Safari 3.0 Public Beta during yesterday's WWDC Keynote. For audience at large the biggest news about the release was that it is now available on Windows, as well. However, apparently there is a "hidden" (well, unpublicized) new feature that is just as exciting for Mac geeks like moi - Web Inpsector.

Web Inspector is a context menu-activated DOM analyzer a-la FireBug for Firefox. This thing is sweet (!) and will make Safari troubleshooting much nicer, from now on.

Thanks, Apple! Well done.

Highly Efficient Rosetta or Darn Slow Photoshop?

When Apple introduced Intel-based Macs, a year ago, it provided comprehensive migration support, as well. Free compiler (program "translating" human-readable source code of programs into "machine code") shipping with OS X is able to produce so-called Universal Binary - code that both old and new processors can understand. So, for many software vendors migration was just a matter of recompiling their source code. Unfortunately, it was more complicated and time-consuming for vendors of large systems where recompilation is not as trivial. Several large software vendors were not able to have their code recompiled and debugged, yet.

To support those more inert, Apple developed technology called Rosetta. Rosetta is a virtualization engine that allows programs, written for old, G# processors to run on Intel-based Macs without changing single line of code. Microsoft Office for Mac, still runs on top of Rosetta, with no plans to recompile it into Universal Binary. Adobe, also, did not have universal binary version of its graphical applications, until recently. In Adobe's case they were very eager to complete the migration, though, as virtualization is a performance hit and performance is important for a graphical information processing software like that from Adobe.

The highlight of and the biggest advancement in the recently released Adobe Creative Suite 3 is the fact that it is compiled in universal binary - with full support of Intel processors and avoiding Rosetta. Adobe is very excited about it and has been honking all over the press how much better/faster the new version is.

Is it really?

Joost, the revolutionary online TV service, is the new craze on the Web. However, if you have been using it extensively, you may have noticed that you are running out of disk space. Ouch!

Not sure how it behaves on Windows, but on OS X, Joost demonstrated an early bug - it "eats" disk space through thoughtless caching. Hopefully, Joost guys will fix the problem, in time, but for now, unless you have unlimited disk space, make sure that you periodically delete:

~/Library/"Application Support"/Joost/anthill/anthill_cache under your home folder.

Have fun

The current, OS-X version of XAMPP comes with PEAR but it's not installed/configured.

Here is what you need to do:

sudo su -  [and type admin password]
/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear install PEAR
/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear install Log
/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear list 

The last command outputs the list of installed pear modules. Log should be one of them.

Once you configure pear and install Log plugin, you need to add PEAR to include_path in XAMPP's php.ini.

Edit /Applications/xampp/etc/php.ini and at the very end of the file note the lines:

1133 ;***** Added by go-pear
1134 include_path=".:/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php"
1135 ;*****

change the configuration to read:

include_path = ".:/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php
                 :/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear"

(comment: of course, the entire include_path must be on the same line, we had to break it at semicolon to avoid the long line destroying the page layout).

You can do it very easily using IcoMaker. Just compose the ico as a GIF in any editor of your choice, save it. Start IcoMaker, go to "New Document", import your existing image with File->Include Image, then save.

That's it.

On unix-compatible systems, you can schedule Skype to make phone calls. For instance, On OS X, you can do it with a simple crontab setup, like:

55 7 * * * open callto://+13056740165 > /tmp/skype.log

which will call certain unfriendly company's customer service number, every day at 7:55 AM.

I was messing with some more sophisticated Drupal modules, today, on my Mac.

Usually, I try to have minimalistic configuration of PHP on my computer to make sure whatever i write is fairly portable. The PHP4 installation that comes with OS X Tiger falls under such classification. So I had the default. But I had to make the aforementioned module work. It was not for hobby - it was work, so I had to upgrade my PHP, ASAP. Most importantly I needed some PHP modules like mhash and GD that do not come with the base installation.

Recompiling PHP is a pain. No offense but especially so on a Mac (at least for me) since Mac has non-standard Unix layout and it is not an orthodox Unix system, anyway.

That\'s where Marc Liyanage\'s wonderful package saved my day - Enthropy installer upgraded my PHP to ver 5 with a wealth of modules installed (all that I needed) and did so in Universal binary. Furthermore, it did not ruine my existing Apache installation (I had to back up config and restore but that\'s it).

Thanks, Marc - you really made my day! Your package rocks.

One of the major reasons I got iMac Core Duo was the Split Personality I was starting to develop having to chose between my most favorite "toys": PowerBook G4 and IntelliJ IDEA. While Mac is the only worthwhile computer, to me, and I really enjoy the mobility of a PowerBook, I have recently gotten addicted to IntelliJ\'s awesome Java IDE and can not imagine developing anything in Java without it.

The catch is - IntelliJ IDEA does not really work on a PowerBook G4. Let me be more specific: it is so slow, it is useless for any practical use. Now, whoever\'s fault it is - that\'s the fact and it was really poisoning my PowerBook experience.

Since I am a Java hacker, most of the time, you get an idea how serious my clinical condition was getting.

Long story told short - I have been using IntelliJ on my new iMac Core Duo, for a while now, and I am delighted. Works flawlessly and gives an absolute best experience for Java development. And, oh, yeah - I think I have less of Split Personality, now :)

P.S.

Despite what Apple Developer Network says, my Intel iMac Curo Duo does have JDK5! Such a relief!!!

It came with JDK 1.4 default installation and I tried finding JDK 5 download, in vain. Just to check Apple Developer Connection site and find this scary message: "Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 4 is based on JDK 1.5.0_06 and improves functionality of J2SE 5.0 on PowerPC-based Mac OS X Tiger systems. This release is not compatible with Intel-based Macintosh computers."

Not quite troo. A quick look in the usual place and voila - there is JDK 5 pre-installed! Just need to move the symbolic link.

This is the same as you needed in PPC Macs:
Go to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
rm CurrentJDK
ln -s 1.5 CurrentJDK

And there we go:
# java -version
java version "1.5.0_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_05-84)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_05-51, mixed mode)

Wohooooo!