Installing Trac on Mac OS X 10.4

Trac is a really cool project management tool that integrates with Subversion.

After using Trac for a little while I was impressed with how it worked, but not so much with the installation. So I compiled a list of things to do to make a smooth installation, and here's my instructions for Installing Trac on Mac OS X:

Download from here.

or copy and paste from below.

This requires an admin user, and you will be required to type in the admin password.

Enjoy.

#!/bin/sh
#
# installing trac on mac os x
#
# including subversion, and other needed components
#


# first clean out any of the old stuff.
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/apr
sudo rm -f /usr/local/lib/libneon*
sudo rm -f /usr/local/lib/libsvn*
sudo rm -f /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/neon.pc
sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/swig 
sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/neon-config
sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/svn*


# make a new directory to download all the source into
cd
mkdir source
cd source

# download the source tarballs
curl http://apache.mirror.pacific.net.au/apr/apr-util-0.9.13.tar.gz > apr-util-0.9.13.tar.gz
curl http://apache.mirror.pacific.net.au/apr/apr-0.9.13.tar.gz > apr-0.9.13.tar.gz
curl http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.3.tar.gz > subversion-1.4.3.tar.gz
curl http://downloads.sourceforge.net/swig/swig-1.3.31.tar.gz > swig-1.3.31.tar.gz
curl http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.25.5.tar.gz > neon-0.25.5.tar.gz
curl http://www.clearsilver.net/downloads/clearsilver-0.9.14.tar.gz > clearsilver-0.9.14.tar.gz
curl http://optusnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/docutils/docutils-0.4.tar.gz > docutils-0.4.tar.gz
curl http://ftp.edgewall.com/pub/trac/trac-0.10.3.tar.gz > trac-0.10.3.tar.gz

#expand them
tar -zxf apr-util-0.9.13.tar.gz
tar -zxf apr-0.9.13.tar.gz
tar -zxf subversion-1.4.3.tar.gz
tar -zxf swig-1.3.31.tar.gz
tar -zxf neon-0.25.5.tar.gz
tar -zxf clearsilver-0.9.14.tar.gz
tar -zxf docutils-0.4.tar.gz
tar -zxf trac-0.10.3.tar.gz


# make 'apr'
cd apr-0.9.13
./configure
make
sudo make install

cd ..


# make 'apr-util'

cd apr-util-0.9.13
./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr
sudo make
sudo make install

cd ..



# make 'neon'

cd neon-0.25.5
./configure --with-ssl
make
sudo make install

cd ..



# make 'swig'

cd swig-1.3.31
./configure --with-python=/usr/bin/python
make
sudo make install

cd ..



# make 'subverion'

cd subversion-1.4.3
./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr \
--with-apr-util=/usr/local/apr \
--with-zlib --with-ssl --with-neon=/usr/local \
--without-berkeley-db --enable-swig-bindings=python \
--with-swig=/usr/local/bin/swig PYTHON=/usr/bin/python
make
sudo make install

make swig-py
sudo make install-swig-py
echo /usr/local/lib/svn-python > /Library/Python/2.3/site-packages/svn-python.pth

cd ..



# make 'clearsilver'

cd clearsilver-0.9.14
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-python=/usr/bin/python --disable-ruby
make
# this is a hack to fix the files that want to run '/usr/local/bin/python'
# when it should just be '/usr/bin/python' as per the configure line above
if [ -f /usr/bin/python -a ! -e /usr/local/bin/python ]; 
then
 sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/python
fi
sudo make install

cd ..



# make 'docutils'

cd docutils-0.4
sudo python setup.py install

cd ..




# and now for the finale!!!
# making 'trac'

cd trac-0.10.3
sudo ./setup.py install

# make these available in '/usr/local/bin/'
# this assumes that '/usr/local/bin/' is in the user's path to run tracd / trac-admin
sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin/trac* /usr/local/bin

A Current Affair accuses iTunes of Illegal Downloads

Dear A Current Affair,

I was appalled at your story on Thursday 8th March "Illegal Downloads", by Paul Stefanovic.

There are a number of things wrong with the story.


#1. iTunes is not illegal.

Your image on your website shows the title "Illegal Downloads" with an image of the iTunes music store.

In fact, the iTunes music store is legal. Apple should be publicly applauded for delivering music across the internet in a method that is protected and pays royalties back to musicians.

If I were you, I'd be expecting something nasty from Apple Computer about this one.




#2. Crooks get rich and have big houses.

There were claims in the story about crooks getting rich and getting big houses and nice cars.

How many of the people who are sharing the 1 billion songs each year are actually paying anything for them at all. Not many, I would suggest, since the whole nature of a sharing systems is that everyone shares, and no one pays.

The only people who really make money from this activity are the internet service providers who charge money for download bandwidth.


#3. Piracy is not new. Sharing is not new. Call it Exposure.

Do you remember when you were a child and you copied a song off a friend onto a cassette tape? That was piracy. That's been happening as long as there has been machines that record sound.

I remember as a child doing exactly that. I didn't have enough money to buy the $30 original CD, so I copied it. On an old recycled cassette tape. I was a fan. Later, when I had a job and some money, I bought CDs and went to concerts. My money eventually went to those artists who I liked. In the mean time, that exposure increases the artists' popularity.

I don't believe that all the people who are sharing music (and movies) should be considered as "taking money away from the industry." Clearly a teenager who has no money to buy a real CD has no money to buy a real CD.

Compare that with the current buzz with myspace. There are plenty of bands and unsigned artists who put there music on their myspace page for anyone to listen to. Without paying. (Except an internet service provider, perhaps).

Musicians understand that exposure is a necessary part of the music industry. Exposure, through sharing or not, ultimately leads to more income by record sales and concert ticket sales.


#4. Parallel Imports

The part of this story about "Deals Direct" is really about parallel imports. This is allowed by law and causes problems for many industries. Musicians were lobbying the government to not allow parallel imports of recorded music, but were not successful.

This argument should be directed at the government who legally allows products to be brought into Australia from countries that do not have sufficient Copyright laws to ensure that the copyright owners (usually the record label on behalf of the musicians) earn royalties from their products.


#5. Who really gets paid?

I would like you to break down where the money actually goes from a $30 CD sale from a major music retailer.

Factor in these costs:
- running the retail shop, (staff, rent, electricity, shipping, etc),
- wholesaler's costs,
- manufacturing costs (even if they are done cheap in asia)
- running costs for the record label (including marketing and promotion).

Now consider that most of the record label's costs are recouped from the musicians royalties anyway.

What is left for the musicians?

I don't know the exact figures in the above breakdown, but I'd wager that the musicians are the ones who come last.

Musicians still have many sources of income: Royalties from broadcast, royalties from synchronisation (being used in a TV program for example), concert ticket sales, merchandising at concerts.

-

I agree with the sentiment that "kids are brought up thinking that music is free". But, I think that this is a much larger cultural shift that applies to fashion, film, television, and books, as well as music.

The sooner we learn to value what is created, the sooner our society can support more artists making a living from their art.


Matt Connolly
Sound Engineer - Film, Television and Music

Intelligent Signal Display

I while ago, I came up with an idea for a better way to show audio signals as waveforms on a computer screen.

At the time, I was doing some dialogue editing on a television mini-series, and became increasingly frustrated at the amount of time I had to spend zooming in and zooming out on the waveform. I began experimenting, and Intelligent Signal Display (ISD) was born.

Intelligent Signal Display as an improved waveform display method where the waveform images are shaded to provide more detail. Here's an example image:

When the audio signal 'moves' faster (which happens with higher frequencies) the centre region of the waveform is shaded darker.

When the audio signal moves slower (ie: low frequencies) the centre region is shaded lighter. This actually corresponds to exactly what the waveform looks like when you zoom in on it so far that you can see the individual cycles.

For more information, go to the ISD page on the Sound Evolution web site.

How to make lists look like lists on Internet Explorer

How do I get lists to work in Internet Explorer and Firefox and other browsers?

I've had a great deal of difficulty trying to get my website (www.soundevolution.com.au) look reasonable on Internet Explorer.

It all looks fine in Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino and Konqueror. But crap in IE6.

Apart from the fact that most of my friends are either on a mac or use firefox, it still seems that about half the traffic on my site is still using this clunky useless insecure browser. (I haven't tried IE7 yet, but I'm on a Mac anyway).

I discovered that setting a 'margin' CSS style attribute on a "UL" or "LI" tag will cause IE6 to not display the bullets at all.

I've since found a whole bunch of sites and blogs talking about style hacks - ways to confuse IE6 into doing the correct thing, and then still letting the good browsers display correctly.

I now feel justified in my obvious bias against IE. If you use Internet Explorer, stop and GET FIREFOX.