Re: [PyMOL] MacOSX.1 port of 0.68, anyone?

Morgan Ryan wrote.

> Has anyone successfully ported PyMol 0.68 to OSX yet? The excellent 
> Gnu-Darwin project hasn't gone past 0.64. An OSX port or an edited 
> Makefile would be nifty. Morgan 

Unfortunately, building natively under OSX isn't as simple as using an
updated Makefile.  Apple's GLUT implementation isn't 100% complete, so
tricky source-code workarounds in PyMOL are required.  I don't currently 
have a suitable Mac for OSX development, so unless I can pool together
donations to purchase one, stable and updated Aqua ports from me will
be delayed indefinitely.  Given that only about 15-20% of the PyMOL 
user base is OSX, I wouldn't feel right about devoting more than 15-20%
of the general PyMOL budget to the platform.  If people would like to
make specific donations for Mac hardware, then that's different.
   
An outside possibility for the Mac is that the XFree86/DRI project
might eventually enable accelerated OpenGL on the Mac platform outside the
Aqua environment.  However, I think this is held up right now because
nVidia hasn't made XFree86 drivers available for the Mac in the way they
have for PC Linux.  Consider emailing nVidia with this specific request.

Without hardware acceleration, PyMOL on an OSX Mac gives only about 1/20th
the OpenGL performance of an equivalent Linux PC.  Thus, today you are
better off spending $500-600 for a hardware-accelerated Linux box than 
trying to use PyMOL exclusively on a Mac, unless ray-tracing is all you 
do.  Given that Apple has so far been unwilling to assist PyMOL 
development on the Mac, they apparently agree with me. 8-(

I'm sorry Mac users of PyMOL are at a huge disadvantage, but there's
little I can do all by myself.  Here's what your options are:

(1) donate $$ to help me buy a Mac and support the platform.
(2) tell Apple why they should loan me a Mac for PyMOL development
    (direct comments to John Martellaro).
(3) tell nVidia why they should provide XFree86 drivers for GNU/Darwin.
(4) switch to a Windows or Linux machine for your OpenGL graphics work.
(5) continue using the very slow version of PyMOL from GNU/Darwin.
(6) use some package other than PyMOL.

If you are a serious developer, you can also

(7) port and suppport PyMOL under Aqua yourself.  This would be difficult
    given that PyMOL's C core isn't particularly clean or transparent.

Cheers,
- Warren