[ckan-dev] Installing on OSX

Tue Feb 7 14:44:34 UTC 2012

I'm could use some help installing CKAN from source on my Macbook. I've run into several issues so far attempting the installation. Here are some of the issues I've encountered:

(1) The CKAN instructions for installing from source specify that a number of packages need to be installed, one of which is "build-essential," described as "Tools for building source code (or up-to-date Xcode on Mac)." I have Xcode version 3.2.4 installed on my Macbook Pro, but the latest version of Xcode is 4.1, and I can't install that without first upgrading my operating system from OSX 10.6 to OSX 10.7 (Lion). I've been holding off on upgrading my laptop to Lion because once I do, my personal accounting software (Quicken) will stop working, and there is no available upgrade.

(2) The CKAN installation instructions require me to enter a number of apt-get commands, but the apt-get command is not available from the command-line in OSX. There are apparently three systems that people use for installing Unix/Linux software on Macs: MacPorts (formerly known as Darwin Ports), Homebrew, and Fink. Fink is apparently the only one of the three that installs binary packages like apt-get, and Fink is out of date and doesn't have a lot of current modules. I've been advised that between Homebrew is easier than MacPorts, but today after installing it and running its "brew outdated" command I got an error message that says, "Error: No such file or directory - /usr/local/Cellar." 

Can someone help me with this?

--------------------------------
Sheldon Rampton
New Amsterdam Ideas, LLC
412 Broadway, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10013
mobile: (608) 206-2745
email: sheldon at nuams.co