[dev] Re: How do you cope with OSX? (if at all)

So, I had to join this list because someone sent me this thread this
morning. Just so happens I have been doing exactly this...

From: Anselm R Garbe <garbeam_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:23:24 +0100

> at work I have to use OSX (on a MacBook Pro 13") for various reasons
> and wonder if anyone is using dwm in conjunction with OSX?

I have a similar environment, although by choice - I prefer mac hardware
and have liked Mac OS X quite a bit. I used to run Ubuntu on my MacBook
(non-pro) 13" however due to software needs at work I have switched back
to Mac OS X.

> Any recommendations you'd like to share?

Oh yes. I use the following setup on two iMacs and a MacBook.

I run Apple's X11.app with the dock set to auto hide. I have found
fullscreen X11 to be a major pain. It might not be as much of an issue if
you never have to use Aqua apps, but I do sometimes so hiding the dock is
good enough for me.

To do builds you obviously need XCode installed.

I am using dwm compiled from the tar ball, works like a champ after you go
through a few setup steps. This is my modified set of instructions to get
dwm working under X11.app: https://gist.github.com/864399

For general software I have Fink as well as MacPorts installed. If you're
on 10.6 then you will be building form source in Fink. Sort of a pain but
once you build a few large apps (Firefox for instance), everything else
will go pretty well. Older versions of OS X have binary packages
available. I can't comment on the quality of those builds since I have
been doing everything from source.

From fink I obtained and use mc, geany, gedit, and alpine. From MacPorts I
obtained bitlbee and irssi. Built a few other things from tar balls such
as calc. ./configure, make, make install work in about 90% of
cases without any problems at all. Otherwise I use Fink mainly - it seems
to have more working packages than MacPorts (ports version of Firefox is
ancient and only works on PPC for instance).

Don't expect to have a fully functional system for the first day or so
working with Fink. Firefox took about 4 or 6 hours to build on my various
machines, but had no issues. All that time just so I can run a browser in
dwm ;)

Make sure you get the latest Java SDK from Apple's website - there are
some virtual dependencies in Fink that require this to be installed (a
package named something like java-dev is just a stub for the latest SDK
available from Apple).

That's the basics... I am sure I'm forgeting a bunch of stuff, but it is
certainly doable and I actually love the setup - I can still use Word and
Photoshop (no comment on that please, it is part of my job), but I can
stick to a clean tiling window manager and mainly text mode apps almost
all the rest of the time.

If you have any questions let me know, I have been using this setup as my
primary environment for a couple weeks and I'm loving it.

-- 
Isaac Raway
Senior Developer, Nerdery Interactive Labs
isaac.raway_AT_nerdery.com
Web Solutions, Powered By Nerds (http://nerdery.com)