[Plplot-devel] Re: Plplot on Mac OS X

[Don S. <sp...@or...>]

I noticed on the last Plplot-devel digest there was a question about 
use of plplot under Mac OS X.  I have recently converted my Macs over 
to OS X and was able to get Plplot up and running on them without too 
much difficulty.  This was much easier than under Mac OS 8 and 9 
where I was never able to get Plplot working in a reliable way.  The 
steps that I went through were:
- install the OS X developer tools.  This comes on a separate CD with 
the OS X operating system and includes such things as the gcc 
compiler, make, etc.
- install X-windows software (e.g., XDarwin, XFree86, etc.)
- I then opened up a terminal window and did the usual configure, 
make, and make install commands to build Plplot.  The only thing I 
remember having to do out of the ordinary here was to use the 
--prefix= flag to tell it where I wanted to install Plplot.  I was 
then able to go to the /tmp directory under Plplot and compile the 
examples.  They all seemed to work, using the X-Window display 
option.  At the time I did the installation, I didn't have png, jpeg 
or Tcl/Tk installed on my machine so those output options weren't 
available.  I now have at least the png and jpeg libraries installed 
so should be able to go back and rebuild Plplot to include those.
One approach that you might want to consider for making Plplot 
available to Mac OS X users is through the Fink Project 
(http://fink.sourceforge.net/) which I've recently started using. 
This project's purpose is to put together coherent distributions of 
UNIX software that OS X users can easily download and install using 
the fink package installer to manage the process.  (i.e., fink would 
know that Plplot needed XFree86, png, jpeg, Tcl/Tk, etc. and go out 
an get them as part of the installation process if they weren't 
already there).
-- 
_________________________________________________________
Donald A. Spong, Fusion Energy Theory, ORNL
Snail-mail: P. O. Box 2009
Oak Ridge, Tennessee  37831-8071
Phone: (865) 574-1304   FAX: (865) 576-7926
E-mail: sp...@or...
web page: http://www.ornl.gov/fed/Theory/stci/stellarator_theory.html
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