[Pan-users] Surprise! :) (Re: Using Pan on Mac)

[SciFi]

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I'm still here!  :)

And I 'heard' my nick mentioned!  ;)

I _was_ wanting to build Pan with the "gtk-on-osx" project
run by John Ralls here:
<https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show//Projects/GTK+/OSX/>
But I have no plans anymore with the fruity systems.

A bit of history since my last post here:

I am 'stuck' on SnowLeopard/10.6.8 plus all security updates etc.
I know I could upgrade to the 10.7.x version, but that would be:
(a) detrimental to other projects
    [e.g. losing Rosetta PPC emulation, and other reasons],
(b) the very last version that will officially run on my iMac,
    [I'm in the same 'pot' as the model "MacPro1,1" towers are in],
(c) we've heard/read too many horror stories w/r/t Lion/10.7
    itself -- INCLUDING reliance on 'cloudy' things (*ahem*).

(Read the archives for this list, I'm sure I've talked about
 this in recent past, as Duncan mentioned [18 months or so].)

Essentially I've long-ago decided to jump off this fruity ship.
I cannot in good conscious make the Fruits any richer with
my meager funds (I'm [still] on disability/retirement, with
 all the 'ugliness' that goes with it [I have nearly
 four-decades work on record BTW]).
Again, please seek my posts on the Pan lists to learn why I
have come to this decision.
So, I [still] intend to go "full F/OSS", having much
expertise in building such computer systems (related to my main
 paid job), both hardware and software/o.s.
(My main problem in not fulfilling this: I need $$$s.
 And I have tons of timer-based schedules: EyeTV, 'cron', etc.,
 that must run on this single/only iMac I do have.  It is
 usually free only between the hours of 2:00am to 6:00am,
 yep only four hours daily is when I can experiment.  <w>)

Due to my own updates, mainly Perl from ActiveState.com which
I've installed such that almost all system tasks use it rather
than the Fruit-provided ones, and other such mods, in order to
get ahead of the vendor-provided versions of the open-source
components of OSX for security fixes and other reasons, well,
I cannot run Fink nor Macports properly if at all.  So I've built
the entire Glib/GTK+2 trees all by my lonesome, taking into
consideration the 'requisites' which I've manually kept track of
(via Readmes etc), and rarely I needed to use the
OSX/Darwin-specific patches that are/were available from
Fink/Macports, and so on.
(And I've built many other code trees, for example I can play many
 video/audio formats with MPlayer, might actually be more than
 what the official VLC build can do.  I can also let MPlayer
 use the win32 "plugins" for even-more formats.  Honest.  <w>)

But I've been lax since all this was built and last updated,
I've left it alone since about 2-years ago or so.

I have other GTK+ apps also, such as the tools (all open-source)
provided by SiliconDust.com for the HDHomeRun TV tuners I use all
the time to archive OTA TV recordings.
(I now have well-over 100 HDD volumes in storage; each disk has
 been the biggest consumer model easily affordable at that time
 over the past several years; right now I am actually using the
 Seagate 4TB 5900rpm size, and usually buy a new volume each and
 every month.)

BTW -- even Mozilla has determined 10.6 is still being used more,
i.e. "more popular", than any-other versions of OSX, currently.
Please read their blog here:
<http://armenzg.blogspot.ca/2013/11/re-thinking-our-mac-os-x-continuous.html>
or here:
<http://oduinn.com/blog/2013/11/21/proposed-changes-to-relengs-osx-build-and-test-infrastructure/>
In particular, they publish a little table that shows this:
> […]
> 
> 4) Distribution of Firefox users from the most to the least (data from 
> 15-nov-2013):
>       10.6 – 34%
>       10.7 – 23% – slightly decreasing
>       10.8 – 21% – notably decreasing
>       10.9 – 21% – notably increasing
> 
> […]

So I'm staying put, until I can finally jump this fruity ship.
(this means I won't be able to generate any binaries for others to use)
(however, I _do_ strongly wish other vendors would realise
 to not drop support for 10.6/SL)


One final thought here:

I might suggest getting Unison
from Panic.com, it usually works
very well with NNTP servers
including Gmane
(I do have an official/paid Unison license
 as a backup.)

But if you're 'game', I do like
Pan a lot more.
FWIW, basically Pan uses the *BSD layer
which OSX relies upon (plus the
Glib/GTK+/etc layers on top of X11/XQuartz).
It's the amount of time needed to build
all that code, even with Fink/Macports.
Then you'd be 'ready' for other
graphical open-source projects.
:)


I have another thought, but I've not tested this at all:
Peek at <http://www.hmug.org/unix.php> and other trees there.
Perhaps the binaries from this site can be used,
but you would be on your own as far as
installing what-all is needed.  ;)
(I'd rather build my own binaries
 with the gcc tweaks I've learned)


I'll stop here, it's plenty long enough.
I hope your eyes are not worn-out now.
;)

I'll be around, but I might not be able to
answer any real specific questions on OSX
or Q's on building any particular projects.


Thanks for reading.



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