Anyway, after quite a few months break from my project, I decided it made more sense to develop my blenderfarmers render farm client application using Python. Blender itself uses Python to perform all it’s scripting tasks. This would guarantee that Python is installed on every computer that is running Blender.

Turns out, it doesn’t even matter if python is on the target machine because built into Python is the ability to bake the python application into an executable. Ruby has this ability too, but I just never could get it working. In one hour, I was able to create a shell wxPython window and “freeze” it to a native Mac package that behaves just like a native app. Beautiful!

I know this is Mac centric, I need to test on Windows too, but my experience is it is harder to get working on my Mac, than my Windows virtual machine.

Great page that helped:  Optimizing for Mac OS X

http://www.semioticpixels.com/2010/01/path-settings-on-mac-snow-leopard/

compile wxMac

# Download, compile, install the 2.8.11 version of wxMac
mkdir osx-build
cd osx-build
arch_flags="-arch i386"
../configure  CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" --enable-universal_binary --with-macosx-sdk=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk --with-macosx-version-min=10.4 --disable-shared --enable-unicode --enable-static --disable-debug --enable-catch_segvs --enable-graphics_ctx --enable-mediactrl --with-opengl --with-libjpeg=builtin --with-libpng=builtin --with-libtiff=builtin --with-expat=builtin --enable-gui --enable-xrc --enable-mdi --enable-gif --enable-pcx --enable-iff --enable-pnm --enable-xpm --with-macosx-sdk=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk --with-macosx-version-min=10.6
make
sudo make install

compile SWIG

# Download, compile, install SWIG 1.3.38
cd /usr/local/swig-1.3.38
sudo ./configure --disable-ccache #--disable-ccache is because I do not have yodl2man installed
sudo make
sudo make install

compile wxruby

# Downloaded the trunk versin of wxRuby
svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/wxruby
cd wxruby/trunk
rake

Error!

# ---------------- ERROR
I get the following error:
lipo: can't figure out the architecture type of: /var/folders/pI/pIyyNf1MGiaa6DODFaul2U+++TI/-Tmp-//ccmdge2D.out
lipo: can't open input file: /var/folders/pI/pIyyNf1MGiaa6DODFaul2U+++TI/-Tmp-//ccsraXTA.out (No such file or directory)
rake aborted!
Command failed with status (1): [g++ -c  -I/usr/local/lib/wx/include/mac-un...]

An application bundle is nothing more than a folder that has been renamed with the extension “.app” and conforms to a certain directory structure.  The directory structure looks like this:

/Contents/
/Contents/Info.plist
/Contents/MacOS/
/Contents/Resources/
/Contents/youricon.icns

The important piece is Info.plist.  It tells the system what to call your bundle and where the executable is located.

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
  <string>test.rb</string>
  <key>CFBundleGetInfoString</key>
  <string>Test</string>
  <key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
  <string>test.icns</string>
  <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
  <string>test</string>
  <key>CFBundleName</key>
  <string>Test Name</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Your application should go in MacOS.  I put my ruby script in the MacOS directory and it could not longer load my resources that were right next to it in that directory.  If I hard code the path to be an absolute path based on where the app is bundled (/Users/jasonxrowland/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS) it works.  I have a feeling, I need to call a Mac specific API to get the resource bundle path.  I’ll figure that out later…

I created the icon using the Icon Composer application included with the Mac.

Installation

wxWidgets

You have to download the source and compile it yourself for Snow Leopard.  This means, you need to install the developer toolset that comes with your Snow Leopard DVD.  Just install everything, hard drives are cheap.  I don’t know if you have to actually run “./configure”, “make” or not.  My guess is you don’t, but I did.  Snow Leopard has some special challenges and you have to do the following:

$ set arch_flags="-arch x86_64"
$ ./configure CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"
$ make

DialogBlocks

After you download, Open the DMG image and copy the contents to wherever you want.  I copied mine to /Developer/Applications.  When you run this for the first time, it asks you to select the location of wxWidgets.

wxruby

The latest stable version is 2.0.1.  If you try to install wxruby through gems, it will install 1.9.3.  I don’t know what’s different between the two, but 2.0.1 is a year old so I want to use it.

wx_sugar

$ gem install wx_sugar

Ruby

You should already have a version of Ruby installed.  I list it here because the latest version as I write this is 1.9.2.  Unfortunately, one of the tools we will use to generate ruby classes does not support 1.9.2.  If you really want to use 1.9.2, you can follow the directions here.  I haven’t tried it so I don’t know if it will work or not.  I just switched to mine to the system version “rvm  –default system”

Making a simple app

There is a great tutorial on the wxruby website.  It shows you how all these tools work together to create an application. I created my frame using DialogBlocks.  I created my ruby file using xrcise.  I completed the tutorial.  Now if you forget that wxruby is 32bit only and you just try to run the app, you may see an error like this:

/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-2.0.1-universal-darwin-9/lib/wxruby2.bundle: dlopen(/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-2.0.1-universal-darwin-9/lib/wxruby2.bundle, 9): no suitable image found.  Did find: (LoadError)
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-2.0.1-universal-darwin-9/lib/wxruby2.bundle: no matching architecture in universal wrapper - /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-2.0.1-universal-darwin-9/lib/wxruby2.bundle
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-2.0.1-universal-darwin-9/lib/wx.rb:12
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
from main.rb:3

To run the app, you need to run ruby in 32 bit mode like this:

env arch -i386 ruby -rubygems main.rb

Here is the screen shot of my app running on a mac.

The apple commands for capturing the screen aren’t as intuitive as the Windows version.

To capture the desktop, Command-Shift-3

To capture a portion of the screen, Command-Shift-4.

To capture a specific windows, Command-Shift-4 followed by space bar.

The Mac version will create PNG files on the desktop with these commands.  If you hold down the control key while pressing these combinations, it will put the image in the clipboard.

sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 4KByte/s
sudo ipfw add 100 pipe 1 tcp from any to me 3000

There are several interesting parts to these commands.

The 4KByte/s which can be whatever speed you want.  This is the bandwidth, measured in [K|M]{bit/s|Byte/s}.

The other interesting part is 3000.  This is the port that will be slowed.  Port 3000 is the default port on which Ruby on Rails listens.  If you are doing Java, you would probably want to use 8080.

The 100 is the rule number.  Useful when it comes time to delete this rule.

To clear out this pipe, simply type the following when finished:

sudo ipfw delete 100

To clear all custom rules, you could type:

sudo ipfw flush

create/edit the .profile file.  Add the following:

export PS1="\W$"

Source it by typing

. .profile

This will create a prompt with the current directory followed by the $.  Yay.

sudo port uninstall mysql5-server
sudo port uninstall mysql5

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql*
sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My*

edit /etc/hostconfig and remove the line MYSQLCOM=-YES-

rm -rf ~/Library/PreferencePanes/My*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL*

Thanks to Rob Allen.