Tricky Fly Blog

Building universal boost libraries for Mac OS X

Justin Walsh — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:27:41 +0000

So the other day I found a need, or a want really, for the Boost Filesystem library. Being that I develop on both PPC and Intel macs I also decided I would like to have Universal (i386/ppc) versions of the boost libraries on hand. This became more of a pain, then I would imagine it needing to be. Thanks to this wiki entry on vr juggler’s wiki, I’ve managed to finally build a universal binary of the Boost libraries.

So now that I’ve experienced this nice long painful process, I thought I would share my results with others. You can grab a copy of my repackaged boost 1.34.1 distribution from my public svn, here. Or if a few hundred MBs of downloading isn’t your style, try out my build scripts that I have packaged up.

Both the SVN and build script will get you release build static libraries built for i386/ppc. Of course the script is a bit more powerful, as you can configure it to your ending desire and needs. You should do something similar to the following steps to get up and running:

Download boost from boost.org
Download my build scripts
Do your standard ./configure
Backup your current Makefile
Place all the scripts into the root boost folder, overwriting the current Makefile
You may need to edit the user-config-ppc.jam and user-config-i386.jam files in regards to your python settings
You may need to edit the INSTALL_DIR, BJAM, and BJAM_CONFIG variables to your liking
Do a standard make install and it should build away

Now there is no excuse to get your boost on.

Public SVN

Justin Walsh — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:36:19 +0000

I’ve setup a new public subversion repository for everyone to have joyous amounts of programming fun with. This is where I will be storing all of my libraries, demos, etc that I would like to share with the public. Feel free to browse my SVN repository whenever you please.

Outages to come… I’m moving!!

Justin Walsh — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:23:10 +0000

Just a small note to all my thousands, err… 2?, dedicated readers. I am going to be moving the trickyfly.com domain over to Slicehost, and keeping my DreamHost hosting around for my SVN repositories and file serving needs. I mean, DreamHost gives me some odd 6000GB of bandwidth and 300GB of disk space, how can I leave that?

In this process I have decided to move over to the Mephisto blogging platform, and will try to re-route all my old links to the new blog once it is all squared away. I don’t think I will be importing my old posts however, and I will be trying to separate out my projects from my blog a bit more. This might inspire me to do some more general blogging, but no promises.

So if you are asking, “Why the move Justin?”, the answer is simple. Freedom. I’ve been in this shared hosting environment for a while now, and I wanted a place where I can do whatever I want and experiment a bit in the process. First up is my blog actually. I’m sure it’s over kill but I decided to run 3 instances of mongrel via a mongrel cluster with lighttpd up front handling the static content and proxying.

In summary, if the site goes down, you now know why. Be on the lookout for new content in the near future as well.

Introducing the Merge To Finder plugin.

Justin Walsh — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:04:18 +0000

I was recently reading Steve Streeting’s (aka Sinbad) blog and he resurfaced a valid point about OS X’s Finder that had long annoyed me as well. In summary when you copy a folder and hit replace in Finder, it does not merge the contents of the folder, it removes the old folder and puts in the new one. This allows for you the user to lose all your data in the destination folder, when maybe all you wanted was to replace some of the files within.

I’ve always solved this problem on the terminal with rsync -r, and it has served me well. Then I decided I was tired of resorting to the terminal every time I needed to copy some files. This leads to the Merge To Automator workflow.

Merge To simply takes the selected items in finder, asks you where you would like to merge those items to via a folder selection dialog, then runs rsync -r [files and folders from finder] [output directory from dialog].

I like my workflow installed into the ctrl + click or secondary click menu of Finder, thus making it a Finder plugin. If you too would like this option, download the workflow and open it with Automator, then select File -> Save As Plug-In… Next, give it a name, “Merge To” is nice, and select Finder from the drop down. Finally, click save. You could also just copy the file to ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/. If you decide you ever want to remove the plugin, then just delete the file at that same path.

Download: MergeToFinderPlugin.zip - 48 KB

Ogre.rb: Ruby Wrapper for Ogre

Justin Walsh — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:33:05 +0000

There is a new project called Ogre.rb over at RubyForge headed by Jason Roelofs. This project aims to take the existing Ogre, Object Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine, library and wrap it all up nicely in Ruby.

The great news is that Linux, Windows, and (now) Mac OS X is supported. I took some time over the past few weeks to integrate mac support, and it is sitting in the SVN repository for the project. Be sure to read the readme, and check the help forum for additional details on the mac support.

If you’ve never ventured into 3D programming before, now is the time. With the addition of Ogre.rb, Ogre applications may now be developed in C++, C#, Objective-C++, Python, and Ruby. Go get your 3D on.

OIS v1-0 Mac CVS Update

Justin Walsh — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:32:41 +0000

I recently updated the OIS v1-0 mac port in CVS. This update provides a new Xcode project for building OIS as a static lib, dynamic lib, or framework. If you’ve never heard of OIS, Object Oriented Input System, check it out on sourceforge.

Update: There is now a mac binary package available for OIS v1-0.
OIS v1-0 Mac SDK - 224 KB

Ogre Eihort 1.4.2 SDK Released

Justin Walsh — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:32:55 +0000

I’ve updated the OS X Eihort SDK and it is now available for download on SourceForge. This release updates some known issues with the previous SDK as well as providing the Eihort 1.4.2 framework. The following issues have now been fixed:

Fixed mouse positioning bug in OIS on load.

Added in the missing headers to the CEGUI framework.

Ogre Eihort 1.4.2 OS X SDK - 33.2 MB

Lua 5.1.2 Xcode Project

Justin Walsh — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:08:23 +0000

Lua is a light-weight embeddable scripting language often used to add scripting support to various games and applications. It has been used in several commercial games such as World of Warcraft, FarCry, MDK2, and many more.

The Lua source package is void of an Xcode project, or a way to output a Mac OS X framework. To remedy this void I have built an Xcode project that will output the following as universal binaries:

Lua Framework
Lua Static Library
Lua Interpreter
Lua Compiler

The archive below is the entire 5.1.2 lua source package from lua.org with the addition of the Xcode project. I ran the tests included in the source package and all went well, however if you happen to run across any issues or have any further recommendations please let me know.

Lua 5.1.2 Xcode - 264 KB

Ruby on Rails OS X Folder Icon

Justin Walsh — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:55:08 +0000

In the spirit of being able to focus my time back into Ruby on Rails I made a nice little OS X folder icon. Come celebrate the beauty that is Ruby on Rails by using this folder icon on your Rails application folders.

Rails OS X Folder Icon - 32 KB

OS X Ogre Eihort SDK

Justin Walsh — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:24:38 +0000

It’s been a while since I have posted any news, but the time has finally come. I have put together a SDK installer for Ogre Eihort on OS X.

Included in the SDK…

Ogre Framework
Ogre Command Line Tools
Xcode Project Templates
Additional Frameworks (CEGUI, CG)
OIS Library
Demo Applications and Media

I encourage all OS X users of Ogre to check out the SDK and provide feedback on the package. I am thinking I still need to add in the Example Application framework files, the source code to the demos, and a few more Xcode Templates. Until then the source release is also available, so don’t hesitate to grab it if you find something missing.

Ogre Eihort Universal OS X SDK - 33.1 MB
*Note: The latest SDK as well as the Command Line Tools and Xcode Project Templates are available on the Ogre website under the Download section.