Instructions contributed by Robert Bryett

These notes refer to installing Shiptool on OS/X Tiger (ie OS/X 10.4.n). It should be possible to install and run Shiptool on earlier releases of OS/X (Panther, Jaguar, Puma and Cheetah), but the exact details will be different (including the Perl and Perl/Tk versions), and I have not actually tried it. The documentation links I reference below give some guidance on how to load the necessary tools on some earlier versions of OS/X. I have no idea how to set up an older Mac running Mac/OS9 or earlier.

OS/X is a Unix-based operating system, so installing Shiptool is essentially much the same as doing it under Linux, FreeBSD etc. Naturally therefore you need the "pure Perl" version of Shiptool, NOT the Windows binaries. To run Shiptool, you will need a Perl interpreter, plus Perl/Tk and some additional modules. You will also need an X-Windows manager to handle the GUI. OS/X Tiger includes a Perl 5.8 interpreter as part of the standard installation, but the other components have to be added. In order to add the Tk modules, certain non-default tools have to be loaded too. I suggest the following steps:

1. Load X-Windows. Apple ships X11 on the standard OS/X Tiger disks, so just load up Disk 1 and perform a Custom Install to add X11.

2. In order to build the required Perl/Tk modules, you will need the X11 Software Developers Kit. I would suggest you install the whole Xcode kit. Again, this is on Disk 1. Open the Xcode Tools folder, launch XcodeTools.mpkg and follow the on-screen directions. You might as well install the whole lot, except probably the cross-version tools. Please note that this install takes a while and appears to hang near the end. Be patient and it should run to completion.

There's some good stuff on steps 1 & 2 here, including downloads of X11 and the SDK if you don't have your disks handy: http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/%7Ewgscott/xtal/x11.html

Beyond this point, you will need to drive your Mac from the command line, just like any other Unix box. The GUI training wheels are off! If you're not comfortable with that, consult your trusty neighbourhood geek.

3. Now you need to make and install the Perl/Tk. Read this to find out how to get the kit and load it: http://www.lehigh.edu/~sol0/Macintosh/X/ptk/

4. Next you need to add the TK::GBARR modules. Download the kit here: http://search.cpan.org/~srezic/Tk-GBARR-2.06/ Then make and install the modules using the same method used for Perl/ Tk above, substituting the TK::GBARR details.

5. Finally you'll need to copy the NewOptionmenu.pm module supplied with Shiptool into an appropriate Tk module directory. The doco suggests the directory that holds Frame.pm is suitable. On my system, that turned out to be: /Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/Tk/ but you can confirm that with a suitable find command, something like this:

sudo find / -name Frame.pm

6. You should now be ready to run Shiptool. First launch X11, which should automatically open an Xterminal session. From the command line, cd to the directory that holds the Shiptool programs and type:

./design

From this point on follow RBW's documentation on running Shiptool.