Skencil is a fantastic, easy and powerful drawing package. Mac OS X is a fantastic, easy and powerful operating system. So, getting the one to run on another is a breeze, right? Nope. A world of pain in fact. But follow these instructions and Skencil on your Mac will mere hours away.

These instructions are for Tiger Mac OS X (10.4) on a PowerPC Mac. Might work for previous versions, Darwin, Intel based Mac etc, but might not.

You need to be an administrator on your system, or much of this will not work.

These instructions are my own, and come with no warranty.

I would suggest you get the darwinports port system installed, as this is pretty much required to get Skencil’s prerequites installed with minimal fuss. However, to get darwinports working you will need the Xcode developer tools from Apple Developer Connection. You might find that the fink project‘s software archive is better than darwinports, but these instructions assume you are going to use darwinports.

Once installed, edit (or create) a file called .bash_profile in your home directory. Make sure it contains the following lines.

  for dir in /opt /opt/local /sw /usr/local /usr/X11R6 
  do
          if [ -d "$dir"/bin ]
          then
                  PATH=${PATH}:"$dir/"bin
          fi
          if [ -d "$dir"/sbin ]
          then
                  PATH=${PATH}:"$dir/"sbin
          fi
          if [ -d "$dir"/man ]
          then
                  MANPATH=${MANPATH}:"$dir/"man
          fi
          if [ -d "$dir"/share/man ]
          then
                  MANPATH=${MANPATH}:"$dir/"share/man
          fi
  done

To test this worked, then open a new terminal window and make sure you see no errors. If not, type

  man port

If you get some information about the port command all is well. To quit man, type ‘q’.

Skencil is written in Python and you need to have Python installed in order to get it working. Mac OS X ships with a version of Python, but we’re going to use the darwinports version instead, as this enables us to install the latest version, Python 2.4. It also provides an easy way of getting other Python modules working very simply. To install Python, type the following in a Terminal window:-

sudo port install python24

Make yourself a cup of coffee at this point. It will take a while.

You’ll also need to install the X11 server. Or client. Or something. I can’t remember. Anyway, that’s on the Tiger install DVD. If you can’t find the DVD then you’ll need to install another version of X11. There’s one at XDarwin and another available from darwinports. But unless you have a very good reason for making your life difficult, use the one on your Apple install DVD, like all things Apple, it “just works”.

You might want to do this

  ln -s .bash_profile .bashrc

to ensure your .bash_profile is read when using the command line from xterm rather than Apple’s Terminal. If you’re not planning to use xterm, don’t bother.

There are a lot of libraries and the like that Skencil requires. Fortuantely, Darwinports makes installing them a doddle.

  sudo port install tk

Typing the above in Terminal, and retiring for a coffee or five, will hopefully result in an install of tcl and tk.