Tuesday, January 27, 2009

How to handle dependencies

Recently, Notecase Pro became dependent on a GtkSourceView library in order to implement syntax highlighting and a few other cool features.
Slight problem is that the program requires at least version 2.4.1 of this library, because it fixes a crash when the library needs to display a picture inside the note.
The problem is that many distros still offer the old versions of the library, for example Ubuntu is still stuck at 2.2.2 which is not good for us.
Windows installer for Notecase Pro comes with this library already prepared for you, so there is not problem there.

To resolve the problem on Linux, you need to compile this library by hand. Here are the steps (adapted for Ubuntu):
  • download the library sources (see website link above) and unpack them
  • open the terminal application and go to the sources directory
  • execute these 3 commands: "./configure", "make", "sudo make install"
Note that if you are missing some dependency for the library, you'll get notified in the configure phase. In that case, install the required dependency and repeat the 3 commands written above.

Once the GtkSourceView library is installed, you might need to install the notecase .deb with force option (because you didn't install the .deb for the GtkSourceView library - because it
doesn't exist).

To do this, from the directory with notecase .deb file execute this command (again from within the terminal application):
"sudo dpkg --install --force-all packagename"
(where packagename is the name of the notecase .deb file)

That's it. Now your Notecase Pro should work fine.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

New year

I hope everyone had a nice holidays. I know I did.
I've just returned from the vacation, so I am now ready to start preparing the new release.

Not that I didn't do anything though. During the vacation I've fixed some bugs and added support for Bonsai Natara outliner import (as requested by one potential user).

But the best news I've got this morning by mail. Daniel Hertrich managed to get the Notecase Pro installed successfully on OS X 10.5! Thank you Daniel, really great work!

Here is the description from his mail:

All commands entered on Mac OS X Terminal, not X11 terminal.
Precondition: Intel Mac (in my case MacBook) with Mac OS X 10.5.6
(10.5 with all recent online updates as of 2009-01-08).
Internet connection must be active for the procedure.


- Installed XCode tools from the Mac OS X install DVD
- Installed Macports from http://www.macports.org/install.php (use the "Leopard universal" package)
- XQuartz installed (X11-2.3.2.1.dmg from
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki (use the inconspicuous
download link in the "Latest release" section of the page)). XQuartz
is needed because otherwise gtk2 will fail to build
- sudo port -d selfupdate
- sudo port install gtk2
(this takes a while, maybe hours, because it fetches and compiles a
LOT of packages GTK depends on)
- sudo port install dpkg (actually not needed in this scenario, because Notecase cannot be installed from the .deb package anyway due to a packet architecture mismatch: i686-apple-darwin8 (package) vs. i686-darwin (system))
- sudo port install Xrender (this is a library which is needed by Notecase, otherwise it won't start)
- Downloaded tar.gz version of Notecase Pro
- cd /
- sudo tar xvf /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Downloads/notecase_pro-2.5.7.tar (adapt version number)
(Binary is then in: /usr/bin/notecase.x11app)
- sudo ln -s /usr/bin/notecase.x11app /Applications/Notecase.x11app
(This generates an Alias entry in the Applications folder)

Now, you can start Notecase by clicking its entry in "Applications".
When a new version is released, download the tar.gz and do the steps
- cd /
- sudo tar xvf /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Downloads/notecase_pro-X.Y.Z.tar
This will upgrade Notecase to the downloaded version X.Y.Z.