What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I saw that VLC 1.0.2 is out with an improved Mac OS X interface and a slew of updates and fixes. It's the "working part" of HandBrake, so I like to keep it up to date so I can rip DVDs.

This morning I saw that iTunes 9.0.1 is now on Software Updates. It appears to be a handful of bug fixes as well as improvements in syncing for iPhones (yeah!) and they reverted the behavior of the "maximize" jelly - now it's the Option-Click that maximizes it and a simple click makes it the mini viewer. Nice. It' great to see them respond to user feedback.

Brent has released a new beta of NetNewsWire 3.2b28 with improved syncing that is far more efficient and accurate. It was faster on the load because it was hitting fewer servers - only those that needed it, and that's always a pleasure to see. It's getting better, and I'm really hoping that there's a "no ads" option that's not subscription based.

Years ago I got an SGI Indigo² workstations with High Impact graphics, and was simply blown away by blender on that machine. It had something like 384MB RAM, and a sub-200MHz R10k, but it could run blender like it was a machine with 100 times that processing power. Since then, I haven't done a lot with blender, but I have staid up to date with it on my Macs as the graphics are better, the CPUs are better, and it was a great experience.

Today the blender crew released Blender 2.49b and I had to get it. It seems to run very nicely on Snow Leopard, but then again, the entire app was written in OpenGL, so if the graphics are good, the app is good. Nice to see it's still being worked on.

Gus at Flying Meat is really moving forward with fixing the bugs in Acorn with 2.0.2 released this weekend. The list of fixes is impressive, with a lot of crashes fixed and a few UI improvements as well.

It's great to see the Snow Leopard adoption going so well in the development community.

One of my favorite web scripting languages is PHP. To me, it seems that it's right in the sweet spot of powerful yet fundamentally a scripting language. That means that it's much more lightweight for a developer than, say Java/JSP, and at the same time, more C-like than, say Perl. While there is a place for almost all of the web technologies in today's development environment, I have to say, PHP holds a really special place in my heart.

Because of that, I was thrilled over the years to see Marc Liyanage continue to produce a great PHP distribution with all the bells and whistles - including my favorite database - PostgreSQL. For the last several OS releases, Apple has delivered a PHP component to Apache, they leave out the PostgreSQL support that I need to do the few scripting-based web projects that I have.

Not Playing Well with Snow Leopard

But with the introduction of Snow Leopard - Mac OS X 10.6, Marc hasn't been able to build a PHP distribution that is compatible with the OS. So when I ran across this article about building the PostgreSQL support for PHP into the Snow Leopard Apache install, I had to jump at it for several reasons:

• It's low-impact. I don't have to get rid of all the suport that Apple has in it's PHP install.
• It's independent of Marc, so I don't have to wait on him to release compelte updates to PHP.

So it is with excitement that I venture off on my own to build the PostgreSQL support into Snow Leopard's Apache server and forever empower myself to keep PostgreSQL support in PHP as it ships from Apple.

Let's get to it!

According to the write-up, we need to set the bash variables:

  MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6
  CFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp"
  CCFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe"
  CXXFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe"
  LDFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load"
  export CFLAGS CXXFLAGS LDFLAGS CCFLAGS MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET

but we can also use the tcsh variable scheme:

  setenv MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET 10.6
  setenv CFLAGS "-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp"
  setenv CCFLAGS "-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe"
  setenv CXXFLAGS "-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe"
  setenv LDFLAGS "-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load"

Then I get into the PHP 5.3.0 source code at: php-5.3.0/ext/pgsql/ and run the commands to build the module:

  phpize
  ./configure
  make

The end result being that in php-5.3.0/ext/pgsql/.libs/ there is now pgsql.so that's ready to be used with PHP. All we need to do is to copy into the right place: (assuming we're still in the php-5.3.0/ext/pgsql directory)

  sudo cp .libs/pgsql.so /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626

and then edit the /etc/php.ini file to tell it about the addition. This is a two-step process, as we need to update the commented-out line:

  ;extension_dir=./

to:

  extension_dir=/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626

and then add in the line:

  extension=pgsql.so

after all the Windows examples of loadable modules.

A quick restart with:

  sudo apachectl restart

and then the system is all ready to go!

Results

It's amazing to see the show up with the familiar 'pgsql' section:

And with this, I can dump Marc's PHP distribution and not have to worry about his updates any longer. The feeling of freedom and independence this gives me is really hard to express. It's fantastic!

UPDATE: this seems to be working, but when I look at /var/log/apache2/error_log I see a bunch of:

dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _PQconnectdb
  Referenced from: /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/pgsql.so
  Expected in: flat namespace

dyld: Symbol not found: _PQconnectdb
  Referenced from: /usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/pgsql.so
  Expected in: flat namespace

when I try to run a simple PHP script to hit a PostgreSQL database and pull back a little data. I have a bad feeling that it's a 32-bit/64-bit issue as the libraries are most likely 32-bit and I'm guessing Apache2 is 64-bit from Apple.

Indeed... the file type of the libpq.5.dylib library in use is ppc and i386, but the pgsql.so is i386 and x86_64. But I'm betting that httpd is x86_64. This means I need to update to a 64-bit version of PostgreSQL for the Mac. Marc L doesn't have one. I wonder if that means I'm on my own, or if I can get something built for me?

[9/18] UPDATE: when I updated from PostgreSQL 8.3.0 by Marc L. to the 8.3.7-3 from William Kyngesburye, and repeated the build, the 64-bit (actually 32-bit and 64-bit) libraries were all I needed. The test page was perfect without any errors:

While I'm a big fan of Google Chrome on Windows at work, I haven't really been that excited about it coming to the Mac. Face it, Safari is WebKit, so there's not a lot that is in Chrome that I don't already have in Safari, but it's nice to see the progress, anyway.

Today I noticed that they had dropped another release of the 'dev' branch at 4.0.207.0 and so I got it just to check it out. I have to say, it's a little behind Camino, which is behind Firefox and then Safari - to me. Buttons aren't rendered right, and this is on the Google home page - of all places. So I think they're still looking at the big issues and not yet interested in looking at the things like how something is rendered.

Thankfully, it's making progress, but I don't have to depend on it.

OK, it looks like NetNewsWire 3.2b25 is out, and simply postpones the adds for another week - no other new functionality or fixes - though they are reported to be in the works. And I'm not at all sure how I feel about this. Sure, it's nice to have a free, stellar, RSS reader on the Mac - a rising tide raises all boats... but I paid for NetNewsWire, and I hate adds. So what's the ultimate solution going to be?

Am I going to have to have a subscription? I'd rather go back to paying for the app. I'm not at all interested in seeing adds, and I don't mind paying for the app, but a subscription service for an app is something that rubs me the wrong way.

I guess we'll see in a few weeks. Hope it's something I can live with.

Well, that didn't take long - already Acorn 2.0.1 has shipped with a non-trivial list of fixes and features:

• Now showing a message when Acorn can't open up an unsupported RAW file, instead of a blank black canvas.
• "New Image From iSight" now puts a name on the layer created in the new image.
• Option-clicking the visibility button in the layers list, will hide all the layers except the one you clicked on. Option-clicking it again will restore the previous visibility settings.
• No longer collecting crash reports that are older than 2 weeks old.
• Bug fix for images that are sometimes flipping when calling a filter.
• Holding down option and command when using the arrow keys to nudge a selection now commits the selection before moving it. Hold down the shift key to move by 10 px instead of 1.

and while I've been really busy with this app extension and haven't had a chance to work with Acorn much, it's nice to see Gus putting in the work to make it even better. Very nice.

Today the Flying Meat crew released Acorn 2.0 for Snow Leopard (10.6). Once again, it's very interesting that Acorn is 10.6-only, and that it's a 64-bit app with impressive speed improvements due to the 64-bit build:

Acorn 2 is 64 bit.

And yes, there are performance improvements with it. Running the Gaussian Blur filter is now 15% faster in 64 bit. Opening JPEG files is 20% faster than 32 bit (measured by scripting operations via JSTalk of course). Is Acorn the first 64 bit image editor for the Mac?

I got it, and the upgrade cost is only $20 from Acorn 1.x, which is very reasonable, considering. I really do love the quality in the indie Mac developer community.