Has anyone tried installing on OS X?

[janiner]

Are there any known reasons why this wouldn't work?  The "Product Datasheet" linked to from the home page says that OS X is supported, but it also says that Oracle is supported and as far as I can tell that's not true yet.  So perhaps the datasheet is describing the end goal and not the current state of things?  Everywhere else on the site I see only Linux and Windows support mentioned.

I have OS X 10.4, which comes with Java version 1.4.2_07.  Java 5.0/1.5 is available from Apple but it does not replace 1.4.2, and I read on someone's blog that an application has to explicitly request version 1.5 in order for it to be used.  So will Alfresco do that or am I just asking for trouble here?

thanks,

janine

[kevinr]

In theory it should work. We are looking into getting an OSX box to try this on ourselves. What you say about Java1.5 is interesteing - as yes Alfresco will need it to work correctly. If you could give it a try that would be great and let us know how you get on.

As far as Oracle is concerned, yes we work against it right now - we can in theory run with all DBs that Hibernate supports which are on this list: http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/reference/en/html_single/#configuration-optional-dialects

Cheers,

Kevin

[janiner]

Ok, I'm willing to be the guinea pig here.  I will see if I can get a Linux box and an OS X box and try both to see where it differs.

I read somewhere on your site that MySQL was the only database supported and that others would come later.  That's obviously out of date.  I will come back here and post if I run across it again.

[steve]

Hello,

Because we use hibernate we should theoretically work against all the databases that hibernate connects to.
We have our software running against both MySQL and Oracle in house, and for the October release are currently planning to certify the software against MySQL, with the Oracle certification coming in December.

For the paid for support point of view, the certified databases will be the ones we support (although I am sure that given the right circumstances this would be flexible), but for the free forum support we would endeavour to help anyone using any hibernate supported database.

Steve

[paulhh]

The comment about Java 5.0 apps having to request explicitly for the right JVM is correct, however, there is a way to switch to the new JVM as the default:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301073

Also, the 5.0 JVM is only available for OS X 10.4.

OS X Server already has JBoss and MySQL installed, so depending on which version you have, you may need to update either of these.  It may be simpler on a basic OS X box just to download and install JBoss and MySQL separately.

We are trying to get our hands on a Mac box as well, but if someone can find the correct steps first, we'd be happy 🙂

Cheers
Paul.

[janiner]

I will keep you updated on my progress.  It may be a couple of weeks before I can get started, though I will do it sooner if possible.

Stupid question alert - I assume that in order to do an apples-to-apples comparison, I should install from source on both Linux and OS X?  That is, the Linux binaries you have available for download won't work on OS X?  I know Java is supposed to be platform independent but I'm guessing you'd have labeled those UNIX instead of Linux if everything in there fit that description.

[paulhh]

Nice one   

Great to hear that you got it working - any gotchas that we should be aware of?  I expect the CIFS is because it's unable to automatically resolve the domain name - you just need to add it explicitly in the 'file-servers.xml' config (see the last bit in the README on "Using the CIFS Server"), or have you already tried that?

We should be getting an OS X box on loan any day now (could even be today - Christmas come early!), so we'll get a chance to test installation and configuration too.

Many thanks for proving it works - we've had quite a bit of interest in Mac compatibility, so I'm sure people will be pleased to hear it's reasonably straight-forward.

Cheers
Paul

[paulhh]

Just got our loan Mac Mini.

Loaded Java 1.5 and MySQL, then took our Linux Tomcat bundle and got things running in a very short time.  The main pain was getting Java 1.5 picked up properly.  Same problems with CIFS, so we'll see whether configuration can resolve it.  We'll get an OS X readme ready for the next release (I might post it here for some initial feedback).

To get Java 1.5 picked up correctly, I had to switch a sym link (needed to use sudo):
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
mv CurrentJDK CurrentJDK-old
ln -s 1.5 CurrentJDK

I also set up Tomcat start & stop scripts that set JAVA_HOME to /Library/Java/Home

Start:
#!/bin/sh
export CATALINA_HOME=~/alfresco/tomcat
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

Stop:
#!/bin/sh
export CATALINA_HOME=~/alfresco/tomcat
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

If people more familiar with the OS X way of doing things can tell me whether this is sensible, I'd be grateful.

Cheers
Paul.

[paulhh]

Adam

Thanks, I did wonder how necessary it was, but had seen reports that the sym link switch was needed in some cases.  Switching back and adding the full paths in the scripts works fine.  I'll set the scripts & readme to work that way.

I got CIFS working fine without doing anything other than the same as for other non-Linux Unix as mentioned above - removed the platform setting and started the scripts with sudo.  Dragged & opened files from it mounted as an smb network server without problem.  It does create a .DS_Store "resource" file as an artifact in each Alfresco space, so we'll do something about hiding those in the web client in the future.  Any more info on the type & size of files you had problems with?

Also, did you use the OpenOffice OS X or NeoOffice/J version?  NeoOffice is based on Oo 1.1.4 as opposed to the "official" Oo, which is 1.1.2.

Cheers
Paul.

[paulhh]

We don't have enough Mac experience to say which is the best OpenOffice to go for, and haven't tested the NeoOfficeJ for transforms (although it still has the same soffice.bin, so I suspect it will work).

I just used the PR6 bundles.  Yes, we're trying to work out the best way to manage svn access 

The .DS_Store is created if you mount a "proper" Windows drive, so I'd expect us to do likewise, but probably hide it in the web ui.

Cheers
Paul.