Add option for UNIX-style installs on OS X

[Sharpie]

This style of installation works nicely with package managers. Developers may also find it handy as it puts QGIS libraries on common search paths.

[kyngchaos]

QGIS is an application, and really only makes sense as a standard Mac application bundle. It doesn't need a package manager for installation and update. If anything, code to generate an Installer package would be useful, and it's on my list of ideas to look into.

If developers want to use QGIS libraries, they just need to know how to use them.

[Sharpie]

QGIS is an application, and really only makes sense as a standard Mac application bundle.

Also a set of libraries, libqgis*, and a Python module pyqis. Having these inside an application bundle doesn't make as much sense if other programs want to use them.

It doesn't need a package manager for installation and update.

But that doesn't mean it can't be added to one. QGIS is already packaged by Macports and fink. I have spent the last few monts building up the GIS stack in Homebrew to the point where it can build QGIS. Some people may prefer this style of installation as QGIS has a lot of dependencies.

[timlinux]

Folks are there any further thoughts on this? William as resident OSX guru it will probably make most sense for you to accept or reject this merge request.

Regards

Tim

[kyngchaos]

Maybe Tom Elwertowski or Gary would have a less biased comment. I'm not too keen on *nix-like package managers on OS X. And as I said, QGIS is an application and it doesn't make sense to me to bury it in another folder outside the standard Applications folders (unless a user chooses to move it, as a unit, to organize their apps). As stated, package managers are already including QGIS, no need to change here.

Dependencies: I'm biased here because I make the frameworks for the main library dependencies, and they are well established (including a framework build option in the source for the big one, GDAL, and I have a patch request for a GEOS framework option). But I do understand that others may want to use unix-style libraries, the libraries still could be used from package managers or custom builds.

QGIS libraries: I'm not sure about this - are QGIS libraries intended to be used by external applications? If not, even if others do use them (like the GRASS libraries which aren't meant to be used outside GRASS, but still are by QGIS), there's no need to make them accessible. If so, separating them from the QGIS application should be done anyways for the application build. If they were made frameworks (an idea I've pondered before) it would be easier for developers to access them.

Interface: A unix-style build changes the user experience in some important, and I think negative, ways - starting QGIS and opening files. Users expect to start an application with a double-click. I don't know if package managers add an application wrapper to take care of this, otherwise users are left with starting it from a Terminal. Then there's files - since the package manager build drops the app package from the QGIS source, does it recreate the file associations for QGIS project and GIS data files so they can double-click them and have QGIS open them?

Hmm, this turned into a bit of a rant. (warning, I'm thick-headed in my opinions, arguing points won't change the overall opinion)

[timlinux]

Hi

I don't have an opinion one way or the other but just to respond to the 'are qgis libraries meant to be used by other apps' - the answer is 'yes' but they typically arent. When I used to fool around with OSX for building openModeller (which relies on QGIS libs), I simply packaged the libs into the osx application bundle anyway so it wasn't much of an issue.

Regards

Tim

[Sharpie]

I see this was closed, however the new QBrowser seems to underscore a point I was trying to make: burying the QGIS libraries inside an app bundle makes it difficult to write new applications that build on top of the QGIS API. Having an option that installed QGIS in a UNIX-style configuration allows those of us doing development on OS X to play with the API just as easily as the people working on Linux.

[kyngchaos]

I'm still in favor of the framework idea, and I have that working now in my fork. I have an idea to install a "developer" copy of the frameworks external to the QGIS app.

[Sharpie]

Packing the QGIS libraries into frameworks sounds like a good compromise, I'll give your branch a try when I get the chance.