Installing Code::Blocks from source on Mac OS X

These are instructions on how to build Code::Blocks under Apple Mac OS X. They have been tested under Mac OS X version 10.3, but should work under Mac OS X 10.4 (PowerPC and Intel) and old Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.1 as well.

We will be building everything from scratch using the source code, and not use any available package managers like DarwinPorts, Fink, Gentoo or RPM. Packaging can be done later, once it has reached a more stable release.

Install Xcode Tools

http://developer.apple.com/tools/

This will install Apple versions of:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/ http://www.gnu.org/software/make/

Check Autotools versions

http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/ http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/ http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/

Build wxWidgets 2.6

Download the Mac release

http://wxwidgets.org/dl_mac2.htm

Install Subversion client

http://subversion.tigris.org/

Build CodeBlocks from SVN

Download the source code

https://www.codeblocks.org/source_code.shtml

Bundle application for Mac

After building codeblocks in the regular Unix way, you need to bundle it with the icons and various other info that it needs to make a regular stand-alone Macintosh application.

There are two ways of accomplishing this, old Mac OS-style resource or NeXT-style bundle. The old resources are handy while developing, while bundles are more suitable for release.

Way 1. Mac OS (resource)

Handy while developing, as you only need to add an icon.

Files needed:

• http://www.algonet.se/~afb/wx/CodeBlocks.r.gz (Rez icon, gzipped)

First we install the program to the PREFIX directory of your choice:

$PREFIX/bin
$PREFIX/lib
$PREFIX/share/codeblocks

Add a custom icon to the application, and make it receive events:

gunzip CodeBlocks.r.gz
sudo /Developer/Tools/Rez -d __DARWIN__ -t APPL -d __WXMAC__ \
                          CodeBlocks.r Carbon.r -o $PREFIX/bin/codeblocks
sudo /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a C $PREFIX/bin/codeblocks

Without the icon part, this could also have be written as just:

sudo `wx-config --rezflags` $PREFIX/bin/codeblocks

Start the application with a small prefix shell wrapper like this:

DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:$PREFIX/lib
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

$PREFIX/bin/codeblocks --prefix=$PREFIX

Way 2. NeXT (bundle)

This does not involve resources, and is more relocatable.

Files needed:

• http://www.algonet.se/~afb/wx/CodeBlocks.Info.plist
• http://www.algonet.se/~afb/wx/CodeBlocks.sh (shell wrapper)
• http://www.algonet.se/~afb/wx/CodeBlocks.icns (Mac OS X icon)

The MacOS program will just be a shell wrapper that calls "bin/codeblocks", like above. Traditionally the bundle would include Frameworks and Resources, but we'll just avoid those here and use the regular "lib" and "share/codeblocks" instead (just as with a regular install).

Setup a hierarchy like this, and copy the files from the regular build/install and the above file list to it:

 CodeBlocks.app
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/Info.plist
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/MacOS/
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/MacOS/CodeBlocks
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/Resources/
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/Resources/CodeBlocks.icns
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/bin/
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/lib/
 CodeBlocks.app/Contents/share/codeblocks/

The CodeBlocks application can now be moved with the Finder, and started up like a regular Mac application.