7 ms·

2011 Rubyist’s guide to a Mac OS X development environment

130 points by bradly 15y ago

stephencelis 15y ago
Having a standalone GCC installer is a nice option (especially if you have an Air with limited disk space), but if you want to avoid the hassle of debugging the occasional compilation failure, Xcode is the way to go.
- RobertLowe 15y ago
  Just a note about GCC/XCode on Lion (esp. if using homebrew): The default GCC installed by Xcode is no longer GCC you expect it too be, it's actually a hybrid of LLVM and GCC /usr/bin/gcc --version i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 A non-hybrid version in installed at: /usr/bin/gcc-4.2 --version i686-apple-darwin11-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1 It's a rather important change to GCC on mac, it even broke `brew install mysql` for awhile: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6277 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6277 Some great hackers found out it was linking to Apple's internal pthread library. Code-softly hackers.
  - theatrus2 15y ago
    It also breaks building GCC due to an LLVM issue (it gives a nice internal compiler error). It's fixed in LLVM upstream, but nothing Apple ships yet.
- starwed 15y ago
  The 4GB download when all you actually want is GCC is also pretty painful.
chrismealy 15y ago
Any word on homebrew installing gcc?
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  There's always Kenneth Reitz' GCC-without-XCode installer[1]. [1] https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer
  - starwed 15y ago
    Man, I was looking for something like that just a few weeks ago, and somehow completely failed to find it. The exact phrase I sued was "install GCC without XCode", which turns up, not the project, but a bunch of stackoverflow questions asking whether such a thing is possible. Most of the answers are pessimistic or involve copying it from installation CDs that didn't come with my Air. The first result now has the correct answer, but said answer is but a few days old! :) Thanks!
chico_dusty 15y ago
Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. TextMate is dying by inches and it never really had the powers of the Unix ones anyway. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. You might as well use Dashcode. Yeah, Emacs blah Vim bleh, but those are not really OS X editors. I do be using Emacs, but I crave real Mac-iness and integration.
- Pewpewarrows 15y ago
  Alloy's MacVim fork aims for better OS X integration: https://github.com/alloy/macvim https://github.com/alloy/macvim You're not going to get a better editor than vim or emacs. If you really refuse to learn either, there's always SublimeText 2, which is in beta right now. It's what most imagine TextMate 2 would have been (and yes, I'm aware that TM2 is being developed, but it's nothing more than vaporware to me at this point).
  - sigzero 15y ago
    I have no problems with the current MacVim and I like that it isn't "better integrated". I would rather it work the same on every platform that I use it on.
- jshen 15y ago
  aquamacs?
  - mark_l_watson 15y ago
    +1. I find that Textmate and aquamacs in tandem provide enough coverage for different coding tasks. Also, I find IntelliJ, RubyMine, and PyCharm great when I need auto-completion and a full IDE environment. (Some of my Clojure using friends may laugh, but IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin is my favorite Clojure hacking environment.) Aquamacs is what I use for all Gambit-C Scheme and Common Lisp coding.
    - jshen 15y ago
smhinsey 15y ago
Does anyone know of a site that collects these sorts of stories? I was recently looking to set up an environment to start experimenting with a new language and I have the ability to do it on ubuntu, os x, or windows 7, but I had trouble finding advice on the tradeoffs of them, beyond the stereotypical "use linux!" type stuff.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

130 points by bradly 15y ago

Having a standalone GCC installer is a nice option (especially if you have an Air with limited disk space), but if you want to avoid the hassle of debugging the occasional compilation failure, Xcode is the way to go.

RobertLowe 15y ago
Just a note about GCC/XCode on Lion (esp. if using homebrew): The default GCC installed by Xcode is no longer GCC you expect it too be, it's actually a hybrid of LLVM and GCC /usr/bin/gcc --version i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 A non-hybrid version in installed at: /usr/bin/gcc-4.2 --version i686-apple-darwin11-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1 It's a rather important change to GCC on mac, it even broke `brew install mysql` for awhile: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6277 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6277 Some great hackers found out it was linking to Apple's internal pthread library. Code-softly hackers.
- theatrus2 15y ago
  It also breaks building GCC due to an LLVM issue (it gives a nice internal compiler error). It's fixed in LLVM upstream, but nothing Apple ships yet.
starwed 15y ago
The 4GB download when all you actually want is GCC is also pretty painful.

chrismealy 15y ago

Any word on homebrew installing gcc?

beaumartinez 15y ago
There's always Kenneth Reitz' GCC-without-XCode installer[1]. [1] https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer
- starwed 15y ago
  Man, I was looking for something like that just a few weeks ago, and somehow completely failed to find it. The exact phrase I sued was "install GCC without XCode", which turns up, not the project, but a bunch of stackoverflow questions asking whether such a thing is possible. Most of the answers are pessimistic or involve copying it from installation CDs that didn't come with my Air. The first result now has the correct answer, but said answer is but a few days old! :) Thanks!

chico_dusty 15y ago

Just too bad 2011 OS X is hurting even more than ever for a competent programmers editor. TextMate is dying by inches and it never really had the powers of the Unix ones anyway. As for BBedit, it's pretty much a HTML editor with syntax highlighting for some other things. You might as well use Dashcode. Yeah, Emacs blah Vim bleh, but those are not really OS X editors. I do be using Emacs, but I crave real Mac-iness and integration.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Alloy's MacVim fork aims for better OS X integration: https://github.com/alloy/macvim https://github.com/alloy/macvim You're not going to get a better editor than vim or emacs. If you really refuse to learn either, there's always SublimeText 2, which is in beta right now. It's what most imagine TextMate 2 would have been (and yes, I'm aware that TM2 is being developed, but it's nothing more than vaporware to me at this point).
- sigzero 15y ago
  I have no problems with the current MacVim and I like that it isn't "better integrated". I would rather it work the same on every platform that I use it on.
jshen 15y ago
aquamacs?
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  +1. I find that Textmate and aquamacs in tandem provide enough coverage for different coding tasks. Also, I find IntelliJ, RubyMine, and PyCharm great when I need auto-completion and a full IDE environment. (Some of my Clojure using friends may laugh, but IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin is my favorite Clojure hacking environment.) Aquamacs is what I use for all Gambit-C Scheme and Common Lisp coding.
  - jshen 15y ago

smhinsey 15y ago

Does anyone know of a site that collects these sorts of stories? I was recently looking to set up an environment to start experimenting with a new language and I have the ability to do it on ubuntu, os x, or windows 7, but I had trouble finding advice on the tradeoffs of them, beyond the stereotypical "use linux!" type stuff.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]