OS X installation bugs and comments

[ghost]

I have installed qucs from the official site (qucs-0.0.18-OSX10.7+.pkg, using OS X 10.10.0 Yosemite). Here are the bugs and remarks of this installation: Bugs:

• [ ] After installation, only the qucslib.app is shown on Launchpad, but all program links shown in /Applications ( by the way, they should put in its own directory on /Applications!)
• [ ] freehdl will not installed, via Macports failed too, bundling it? I mailed the author, no reactions until now.
• [ ] All windows doesn't appear in front on starting, thats very annoying!

Features/Nice to have:

• [ ] German support is bad, it looks very unserious, if some words in english and others in german!
• [ ] Whats about predefined extension linking like .sch?
• [ ] OS X is not Unix! The .app's have to be in /Applications not in a /bin!! UNIX programs will not use .app's, so there is no need to corrupt the system. The commandline tools should be in a /bin, thats ok.

Best regards!

[guitorri]

A few comments:

• Up to version 0.0.17 the packaging was handled by Package Manager, which was deprecated in favor of pkgbuild and productbuild. Version 0.0.18 was packaged with the script buildpkg_qucs.sh. I had to rush a bit on this to get it packaged for the release, so I deliberately took the shortest path I could find. That is why things look more like Linux than OSX.
• I don't know about Launchpad, I never use it. There is however a postinstall script that should set symbolic links into ~/Applications
• Yes, bundles should be either in /Applications/ or ~/Applications/. However Qucs apps are not fully relocatable. It either requires QUCSDIR to be set or the application should be contained in the same bin/, as the other tools (qucsator, qucsconv, ...) to be able to find them. See https://github.com/Qucs/qucs/blob/master/qucs/qucs/main.cpp#L884
• freehdl is unmaintained and should be replaced by ghdl. On top of that, freehdl requires a compiler, if the user needs a compiler it can as well go the last mile an build it from source (with MacPorts or Homebrew). I think freehdl is currently broken with clang. By the way, at the moment only ASCO is included, all the other things (octave, icarus, adms and freehdl) should be sourced elsewhere.
• I don't know why the windows do not start taking the focus on the front plane.
• The missing German translations are on the Qucs strings or Qt strings? You might need to update them. (this is not related to OSX right?)
• I am not so sure about setting the .sch extension. Typically they live inside a *_prj directory, shall it open the project instead? Otherwise I am not sure it will be able to find/load subcircuits and datasets for instance.
• User stuff should be in /usr/local/bin/, not in /bin/ right?
• For development purposes everything should be installed/bundled where the --prefix is set to be. Packaging is another thing. For that we can fine tune it and add more options to Autotools (or Cmake, but this will need more work).
• Another point is that every Qucs app has the Qt libraries bundled in each of them. If we can find a different layout for the bundle, share the libraries among the apps, we could reduce significantly the size of the package.

[ghost]

• The location would matter less if there will be a (documented!) uninstall procedure. The simplest way would be to provide a simple list of rm -rf commands in the install documentation, which lists ALL files installed by qucs.
• Yes, on POSIX-Standard you have to put your executables in /usr/local/bin
• Qt bundled libs: I am wrong, or would it be the simplest way to copy the Qt-Libs just one time in a global known directory like /Library/Frameworks? But be aware of other higher rated versions of Qt4 they allready installed.
• I don't know about the deps to other Libs and Programms, but it's user-friendly if they bundled.
• Lauchpad: On 10.10 Yosemite it's an integral part of the system! The app must to be seen here! Perhaps one need to update some cache on installation (see http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/01/refresh-launchpad-in-mac-os-x-10-7-lion/ )?
• Extensions: I recomment to rename the project extension to more unique like _.qucsprj in general for the next release and setting them up to start the Qucs.app if clicked double on them. The other qucs.app's would create there own extensions (like *.sch ?), right? Prepare them too for start up on double click events would be nice. I don't know enough about the structure of the qucs-suite at this moment...

How can I skip the italic feature with the underline like above (... *.qucs_prj ... )?

• An addition: It would be nice if the apps will be signed.

[ghost]

Launchpad: I suppose this would be the solution: The qucs*.app's wouldn't shown because they no real Apps just links to them. I think you need to make a short AppleScript wrapper which will launch the app and put this script in /Applcations like descripted here under Adding masked applications to Launchpad: https://hacksformacs.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/launchpad-tips-and-tricks-part-2/ On my system I tested by hand and it's works. Ask if you have questions about that.

[guitorri]

The uninstall-qucs-pkg.sh was not available/tested at the time of the release. Hence it was not included. The BOM files should provide you with the list of files (for a .pkg at least). However the current script does not test if the files where indeed removed. I am not sure it still works with OSX 10.10.