Hi First off thanks to everyone who has created Homebrew, I installed about half an hour ago and already it's 200% less headaches than Macports. I just have one issue so far - how can I go about making universal binaries? For example, I want to install GSL (the GNU Scientific Library) as a universal binary as I need to link the dylib into a number of 32-bit only programs. I see from "grep -ir universal *" in Library/Formula that a few formulae seem to have custom support for universal binaries. Does this mean there is no system-wide support for it? Cheers, Malcolm
Hey Malcolm, Indeed, there are, it turns out, quite a number of times when universal binaries are useful. For your own personal usage you can try to get a universal binary by calling: ENV.universal in that formula's install function. That may work, but you might also have to examine the formula's configure arguments too. Really we should have a command line switch that activates that. Max > Hi > > First off thanks to everyone who has created Homebrew, I installed > about half an hour ago and already it's 200% less headaches than > Macports. I just have one issue so far - how can I go about making > universal binaries? For example, I want to install GSL (the GNU > Scientific Library) as a universal binary as I need to link the dylib > into a number of 32-bit only programs. I see from "grep -ir universal > *" in Library/Formula that a few formulae seem to have custom support > for universal binaries. Does this mean there is no system-wide support > for it? > > Cheers, > > Malcolm >
On 23 Mar 2010, at 17:07, Malcolm Reynolds wrote: > First off thanks to everyone who has created Homebrew, I installed > about half an hour ago and already it's 200% less headaches than > Macports. I just have one issue so far - how can I go about making > universal binaries? For example, I want to install GSL (the GNU > Scientific Library) as a universal binary as I need to link the dylib > into a number of 32-bit only programs. I see from "grep -ir universal > *" in Library/Formula that a few formulae seem to have custom support > for universal binaries. Does this mean there is no system-wide support > for it? Correct, for the moment at least. In some ways, universal binaries are against the spirit of Homebrew. Homebrew is about optimising installation for your particular version of OSX and your particular machine. This doesn't really sit well with universal binaries. In this case what you want is not actually a universal binary anyway but a 32-bit version of the library. I'd recommend in that case you just compile it manually. Out of interest, are these 32-bit only programs open-source or proprietary? -- Cheers, Mike Arthur http://mikearthur.co.uk
> Correct, for the moment at least. > > In some ways, universal binaries are against the spirit of Homebrew. Homebrew is about optimising installation for your particular version of OSX and your particular machine. This doesn't really sit well with universal binaries. > Fair enough, I figured this was probably an on-purpose thing. > In this case what you want is not actually a universal binary anyway but a 32-bit version of the library. I'd recommend in that case you just compile it manually. I'll do this, thanks. My only problem is I might want the 64 bit library at some point as well.. > Out of interest, are these 32-bit only programs open-source or proprietary? One of them is matlab (proprietary), the student version is 32-bit only. I know there are a bunch of free alternatives (python + numpy, octave, sage, etc etc) but I've concluded from brief evaluations that none of them are quite as good for fast prototyping, which is all matlab is good for anyway. I also work in a field (Machine Learning / Computer Vision) where matlab is completely ubiquitous (researchers release their code in a matlab version only, usually) so ditching it is simply not an option. Yet. Another is Steel Bank Common Lisp, which is free (BSD licensed). I run that 32-bit because more of the self tests pass compared to 64-bit, although to be fair there is lots of active development on getting the OS X version as stable as the Linux version is, so I may not be running the 32 bit version for that much longer. Anyway, thanks for your advice. Malcolm
On 23 Mar 2010, at 17:29, Malcolm Reynolds wrote: > I'll do this, thanks. My only problem is I might want the 64 bit > library at some point as well.. In that case I'd recommend managing the 64-bit library in Homebrew and the 32-bit manually. > One of them is matlab (proprietary), the student version is 32-bit > only. I know there are a bunch of free alternatives (python + numpy, > octave, sage, etc etc) but I've concluded from brief evaluations that > none of them are quite as good for fast prototyping, which is all > matlab is good for anyway. I also work in a field (Machine Learning / > Computer Vision) where matlab is completely ubiquitous (researchers > release their code in a matlab version only, usually) so ditching it > is simply not an option. Yet. Don't worry, this isn't Linux and we're not a bunch of open-source zealots that will tell you to dump your proprietary software. It's just sometimes with open-source 32-bit-only software, either they can be included in Homebrew (e.g. Wine) or they can be patched. > Another is Steel Bank Common Lisp, which is free (BSD licensed). I run > that 32-bit because more of the self tests pass compared to 64-bit, > although to be fair there is lots of active development on getting the > OS X version as stable as the Linux version is, so I may not be > running the 32 bit version for that much longer. Good news that there is progress on this front. > Anyway, thanks for your advice. A pleasure. Thanks for your educated and reasonable questions. Have a great day! -- Cheers, Mike Arthur http://mikearthur.co.uk