Re: Mac OS builds. Or even iPad?

[Carsten Wenderdel]

On 25. Feb 2024, at 20:30, Øystein Schønning-Johansen <oysteijo@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I'm asking for a friend, as the apple products really aren't my style.
> 
> Are there any builds of GNU Baclgammon for Mac avalable? or even iPad?
> 
> -Øystein

Hi Øystein,

A year ago I had the same issue and Philippe Michel had some answers which 
helped me (bison!), so I quote his message from 2023-01-03:

> There were a few issues in the source code and in the lack of 
> documentation for the process but I think the former have beed fixed 
> now.
> 
> The first obstacle was that some of Apple development tools, at least 
> bison, are too old (probably stuck at an earlier GPL licence). You would 
> need either those from Homebrew or Macports ; you will need some 
> libraries from them anyway.
> 
> If either of these packages managers is available and the prerequisites 
> detailed in the INSTALL file from the sources distribution installed
> 
> ./autogen.sh
> ./configure <with possibly some adequate options>
> make
> 
> should complete.
> 
> I don't have the exact log of what he finally did (he used homebrew), 
> but he could build a working version with the GUI enabled. The only 
> obvious issue was that the Tutor mode didn't work but he wasn't 
> interested in investigating that at the time.

Even with the help it took me a while - I installed GTK twice with different 
package managers, had to tweak some GnuBG files and rename or delete some 
system files on my machine.

It then run on my Mac, but had some small bugs - mainly the UI had problems 
capturing mouse events.

I now have a new MacBook and decided to not try compiling for MacOS this time. 
Instead I use Linux in a virtual machine (UTM), which means less performance 
but also way less hassle.

GTK’s support for Mac in general is dwindling … personally I wouldn’t invest 
more time in making GnuBG with its current UI compile on MacOS. Exception: If 
you also ship the virtual machine or docker image.

A note on iPad: It seems to be a grey area. I have found some sources saying 
that Apple’s App Store rules are not compatible with the GPL. Anyway - to my 
knowledge there is no open source version of GnuBG for iOS. I believe however 
that some apps are out there which stole at least the neural networks, probably 
also the source code. I’ve played with some app and some wrong moves of that 
app were wrong in the same way that GnuBG 0 ply is wrong (but not GnuBG 2 ply).

Best
Carsten