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Friday, October 17, 2014

Installing Drupal on FreeBSD

Drupal ports have been available on FreeBSD since quite a long time, and binary packages can be installed very quickly. However, manual setup is required to connect Drupal to the database and have Apache serve the Drupal website. In this post I'll describe the setup procedure of Drupal 7 on FreeBSD 10.0. The process will not be very different if different versions of Drupal or FreeBSD are used.

Installing Drupal

Drupal ports are available on FreeBSD and, in fact, multiple versions are available:

# pkg search drupal
drupal6-6.31
[...snip...]
drupal7-7.31
[...snip...]

Unless there is a compelling reason not to do so, install the latest one:

# pkg install drupal7

To successfully run Drupal, you need:
  • The Apache HTTP Server.
  • PHP.
  • A supported database server (PostgreSQL or MySQL).

The Drupal port, however, does not enforce these dependencies, so that you have to satisfy them manually.

Installing the Apache HTTP Server

Unless there is a compelling reason not to do so, install the latest available Apache port (apache24 at the time of writing):

# pkg install apache24

Once the port is installed, enable the corresponding service adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

apache24_enable="YES"


Installing the Database

Drupal supports both PostgreSQL and MySQL but the Drupal port does not install any, by default, although it installs the MySQL client utilities. In this post MySQL will be used but if you prefer using PostgreSQL instead, just skip this section and read this article instead.

Since the Drupal port by default defines the MYSQL option, when you install the binary package using pkg you'll also get a MySQL client port, such as what I got at the time of writing:

mysql55-client-5.5.40

As a consequence, you have to install the matching mysqlXX-server port:

# pkg install mysql55-server-5.5.40

If you try to install a different version (at the time of writing mysql56 is available), you may be requested to remove Drupal itself because of the inter-dependencies between the client and server MySQL packages.

Once MySQL is installed, enable the corresponding service adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

mysql_enable="YES"


Installing PHP

The installation of PHP is taken care of by the Drupal port. However, the PHP module for the Apache HTTP Server is not installed and must be installed manually. Make sure you install the PHP module that corresponds with the PHP version installed by the Drupal port. At the time of writing, the following modules are available:

# pkg search mod_php
mod_php5-5.4.33_1,1
mod_php55-5.5.17_1
mod_php56-5.6.1

Since the port depends on php5, then mod_php5-5.4.33_1,1 should be installed:

# pkg install mod_php5-5.4.33_1,1

The port takes care of modifying the Apache HTTP Server configuration file so that the PHP module is loaded. If you did not install the packages in order suggested by this post, then you may have lost that piece of configuration. In any case, make sure a line similar to the following is present in /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf:

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache24/libphp5.so


Installing drush

drush is an optional package offering an amazingly good command line interface to perform many Drupal-related management tasks: drush could even be used to install Drupal, but this topic is not covered by this post, since I prefer relying on a port tested specifically on FreeBSD. However, once you have tested that a specific release works correctly, you may find drush very useful to streamline your installations. If you are interested in using drush, you will find plenty of good information on the Internet. To install drush, the following command may be used:

# pkg install drush


Creating a Database for Drupal

A database for Drupal must be created in the DB server installed in the previous section. The MySQL port sets no password for the root user connecting from localhost; for this reason, setting its password is recommended (in bold the text input by the user):

# mysql -u root
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
[...snip...]
mysql> set password for root@localhost=PASSWORD('your-password')
mysql> exit
Bye

Once the password is set, you can try to reconnect (in italic bold the variables whose name should be changed with your values of choice):

# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
[...snip...]
mysql> create database drupal_database_name;
mysql> create user 'drupal_user'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
mysql> grant all privileges on drupal_database_name.* to 'drupal_user'@'localhost' with grant option;
mysql> flush privileges;


Configuring the Apache HTTP Server

Now that everything is in place, we can configure the web server so that it starts serving the Drupal web application. The tasks to perform are the following
  • Configuring the required modules.
  • Configuring a virtual host to serve Drupal.
  • Configuring a MIME/type for PHP.

The modules required to run Drupal are mod_rewrite and the PHP module. The latter was configured automatically by the PHP module port, and the latter can be configured uncommenting the following line from /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf:

LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so

The cleanest way to segregate the Drupal configuration is creating a virtual host for it. An additional advantage of this approach is that Drupal will be served from the root path (/) and you won't need to use any rewrite rule to achieve the same result. Assuming the host name and the port where Drupal will be published is drupal.host.name:80, then create a file in /usr/local/etc/apache24/Includes named drupal.conf and define the skeleton of the virtual host:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName drupal.host.name

  # Drupal directory configuration placeholder
  
  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/drupal-error.log
  LogLevel warn
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/drupal-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

In the default configuration of Apache in FreeBSD, any .conf file in this directory is included automatically, so that no additional code is required to add the virtual host to the web server configuration. In this fragment I've used an environment variable (${APACHE_LOG_DIR}) to separate some server configuration variables that could be reused in external scripts. To define environment variables, a .env file must be created in /usr/local/etc/apache24/envvars.d such as:

The Drupal directory fragment defines the DocumentRoot of the virtual host and some of the required options:

DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/drupal7
<Directory "/usr/local/www/drupal7">
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

The option AllowOverride set to All is required so that .htaccess files shipped with Drupal are taken into account by the Apache HTTP Server. In this fragment, the path of the Drupal installation directory of the FreeBSD port is used. If you installed Drupal using alternative methods (such as drush), update the path accordingly.

The complete virtual host configuration file is:

Finally, the Apache HTTP Server must be instructed to execute the PHP code contained in PHP pages and to do so we need to add a MIME/type for them adding the following line in httpd.conf:

<IfModule mime_module>

  # Content has been trimmed

  # Add MIME type for PHP
  AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

</IfModule>

Once all the settings are in place, Apache can be restarted and you can point your browser to http://drupal.host.name/ where the Drupal installation wizard will welcome you and will require you to input the database configuration and other Drupal website settings.

To restart the Apache HTTP Server, the following command can be used:

# service apache24 restart

Configuring Drupal behind a Proxy Server

Machines connecting to enterprise network often are not connected directly to the Internet but require the use of a web proxy server instead. Drupal can be configured to use a web proxy server by setting the following variables in ${DRUPAL_HOME}/sites/default/settings.php. If this file does not exist, copy the file default.settings.php (shipped with Drupal) into settings.php. The configuration variable that enable proxy support are the following:

Depending on your proxy settings, different values may be used.

Beware that although Drupal itself (Core) supports a proxy, many third-party modules still do not. One notable exception at the time of writing is the reCaptcha module which will not work without a direct Internet connection.

Setting Up Clean URLs

Last but not least, clean URLs support may be enabled. Drupal performs a sanity check and will not allow you to enable the Clean URLs feature if the test does not pass. However, I have found plenty of false negatives when running Drupal 7 on FreeBSD: if the Clean URL test fails in your installation, try checking if clean URLs are working and use the workaround described in the official Drupal documentation and forcibly enable Clean URLs.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

fswatch 1.4.5 - Release Notes

fswatch 1.4.5 has been released.

New features and bug fixes added since v. 1.4.0 are:

  • Add custom record formats.
  • Localize fswatch and libfswatch using GNU gettext.
  • Add Italian (it) localization.
  • Add Spanish (es) localization.
  • Fix Makefile.am because of broken link when DESTDIR installs are performed.
  • Fix bug in fswatch-run wrapper script for ZSH which caused last argument not to be split when passed to xargs.
  • Add batch marker feature to delimit the boundaries of a batch of events.
  • Add Texinfo documentation.
  • libfswatch API is now versioned.
  • Improved Autoconf checks.
  • The inotify monitor now waits for events and honours the latency settings.
  • Automaticaly generate the ChangeLog using Git.
  • Update autogen.sh to honour some commonly used environment variables.
  • The inotify monitor now provides the same functionality provided by all the other monitors.
  • Recursive directory monitoring is now implemented.
  • Version and revision is now determined dynamically from Git by ancillary scripts invoked by the GNU Build System.
  • fswatch does not compile on OS X < 10.9 because some required C++11 classes are not supported by the C++ runtime.
  • fswatch does not compile on OS X < 10.9 because some required C++11 classes are not supported by the C++ runtime.
  • The libfswatch library has been added with bindings for C and C++.
  • fswatch let users specify the monitor to use by name.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

fswatch 1.4.0 - Release Notes

fswatch 1.4.0 has been released bringing few but important updates:
  • Monitor implementations are found at runtime so no more hardcoded options to choose a specific monitor (the plugging mechanism still needs improvements).
  • The fswatch engine has been moved to a separate library called libfswatch with bindings for C and C++. If you need to use the functionality of fswatch from your program, now it's very easy to do. The library and its headers are distributed in the same fswatch bundle.
  • On OS X fswatch can now be installed from either MacPorts and Homebrew (see README for more information).

I hope you enjoy using fswatch as much as I enjoy writing it.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Writing a MacPorts Portfile (and Testing It on a Local Repository)

As a MacPorts user, it is maybe funny that fswatch is available on Homebrew and not on MacPorts. Today I put an end to this idiosyncrasy of mine and submitted my first MacPorts port file.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, although a deceiving initial impression, setting up my first port file was way easier than I first believed. Furthermore, the MacPorts guys have been very supportive and provided many insights that helped me improve the port file and my understanding of the MacPorts port system (beyond what is described in the nice MacPorts Guide).

The Basic Portfile

The basic Portfile for a source tarball generated by the GNU Build System, that is a package which is built and installed with the now classic:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

is typically very simple, since these two operations are performed out of the box by the Configure, Build and Destroot phases of a port installation life cycle.

In this case, the basic Portfile includes:
  • The modeline (optional).
  • The Subversion ID tag: placeholder string automatically expanded by the MacPorts infrastructure.
  • The PortSystem line: required by all ports.
  • The port name and version: many other port variables (including the source tarball name) depend on these values.
  • The category line: one or more port categories.
  • The platform: darwin most of the times.
  • The maintainers.
  • The short and long description.
  • The homepage.
  • The download URLs.
  • The checksums (used to verify the integrity of the downloaded files).
  • The dependencies (optional).
  • The configure arguments (optional).
A fully working, basic port is the following:

In this example you can see how the download URL is split in two pieces: the master_sites and the distfiles (or distnames). The rationale behind this choice is the fact that a package may typically be hosted by multiple master sites (such as mirrors).

In this example, distfiles is specified. This variable contains the full distribution file name, including the suffix (the file extension). By default this value is set to ${distname}${extract.suffix}. You may as well define the distname (which defaults to ${name}-${version}) and the extract.suffix separately. These parameters, in the example above, are redundant, since they simply set the corresponding default value (and use_zip is used as a shortcut to set extract.suffix and other variables related to processing zip files).

A Portfile for a GitHub-Hosted Project

fswatch, such as many other projects nowadays, is hosted at GitHub.  Although not yet documented on the MacPorts Guide, a recently added PortGroup called github greatly simplifies  the Portfile for such projects. The only existing documentation, at the moment, is this port group source code.

Many of the aforementioned configuration variables are inferred by a much simpler GitHub configuration such as:

github.setup        emcrisostomo fswatch 1.3.9
github.tarball_from releases

This expands to:
  • name is set as the GitHub project name (fswatch in this case).
  • version is set as the GitHub version tag (1.3.9 in this case).
  • The download URL and the distribution file name is inferred from the repository configuration and the corresponding release URL. If the distribution file name is different than the default (${name}-${version}) then you still have to configure it as described in the previous section.
The resulting Portfile is the following:


Checking Your Portfile

The port utility can check whether a Portfile conforms to the MacPorts guidelines using the lint command:

$ port lint --nitpick fswatch
--->  Verifying Portfile for fswatch
--->  0 errors and 0 warnings found.

In the example above the fswatch Portfile passes verification with no errors nor warnings. Be sure to check your Portfile before submitting it to the MacPorts repository.

Testing Your Portfile With a Local Repository

You can test and store your Portfiles in a local repository before submitting them to a public repository in a private repository. Furthermore, you can take advantage of the MacPorts package management features to maintain your own local packages.

Adding a Portfile to a local repository is very simple:
  • Create the local repository directory somewhere (if it does not exist).
  • Create a subdirectory (if it does not exist) named after the primary category of the port you are adding.
  • Create a subdirectory named after the port.
  • Move the Portfile into this directory.
  • Make sure the user macports has sufficient privileges to read the repository (I usually give him ownership of the port directory).
  • Update the port repository indexes running portindex from the repository root.

If you have not done it yet, you have to configure MacPorts to use your local repository, adding a line in $MACPORTS_HOME/etc/macports/sources.conf:

file:///ports

right above any other repository so that ports in the local one take precedence over ports in the public repository.

If everything is setup correctly, you will be able to query and install ports from your local repository.

Further Readings

A basic Portfile such as what I described in this blog post is just the beginning: we only scratched the surface of what MacPorts can offer you. If you want to get further information about MacPorts and the facilities it provides (either from an user or a developer standpoint), start from the MacPorts Guide.

Public Domain Flags Archive (in Vector Image Format)

Some time ago, when I was implementing the EMCCountryPickerController component I described in some earlier posts (such as this one), I soon realised I needed high quality images of the flags of all the countries listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard. And since the EMCCountryPickerController library is GPL-licensed, I needed images whose license was compatible with it in order to distribute them together with the component.

I found decent collections of flags in the internet but at the end I decided to build my own, especially in order to overcome problems that arose from the limited resolution of many image collections.

I picked the flags from Wikimedia Commons since they're available in SVG format (a widely used vector image format). This way, if I need to, I can render a flag at any resolution.

I then assembled a GitHub repository where you can find:
  • All the flags in SVG format.
  • All the flags in PNG format scaled to a width of 256 pixels.
  • All the flags in PNG format, scaled to a width of 512 pixels.

The following is a shell script that can be used to render the flags archive at the desired widths.

The script requires librsvg to be installed.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Installing Logstash v 1.4 (and Greater) on FreeBSD

In a previous post I described how to install Logstash (v. 1.3 and previous) on FreeBSD and in this post I will describe how to install Logstash v. 1.4 and greater.

Until version 1.3 included, Logstash was distributed as a single JAR file, and when version 1.4 was released a new packaging style was introduced. As a consequence, new instructions are required to properly setup Logstash in FreeBSD and registering it as a service. Further information about the new    distribution layout can be found in the Logstash release notes.

As seen in the previous post, a Logstash FreeBSD port exists, but it is currently outdated since it bundles Logstash v. 1.2. But while this could be used as a starting point for JAR-based Logstash installations (as we have seen, the update process only required updating the Logstash JAR), this is not possible with the new Logstash distribution because the included rc script will fail to work.

Edit: I've managed to patch the broken Logstash dependency and I'm waiting for the pull request to be merged upstream. In the meantime you can use an updated FreeBSD port I've created to install Logstash on FreeBSD 10.

Edit: The Logstash port has been updated and I'm the new maintainer. Also, the pull request solving a JRuby bug on FreeBSD has been merged to upstream and will hopefully hit a Logstash release soon.

Skimming through the original post is recommended because it provides general information about Logstash and FreeBSD which is required to properly plan and execute a Logstash setup.

Prerequisites

The essential prerequisites required to execute Logstash are:
The former is required because LogStash is a JRuby application while the latter, although not technically a requirement, is the recommended output for Logstash.

Installing Java

To install OpenJDK on FreeBSD you can use pkg to install a ready-to-use binary package:

# pkg install openjdk

Currently, this command will install an instance of OpenJDK v. 7 in both FreeBSD 9 and 10. If you'd rather install a different version, you can search the available packages and pick the one you prefer (command output has been filtered for brevity):

# pkg search openjdk
openjdk-7.60.19,1
openjdk6-b31_3,1
openjdk8-8.5.13_7
# pkg install openjdk8-8.5.13_7

Installing ElasticSearch

Logstash includes an embedded ElasticSearch instance you can use for standalone installations (see my previous post for an introductory view on Logstash operation modes). The required configuration to bootstrap the embedded ElasticSearch instance and to have Logstash use it as its outputs is described in the following sections.

Although simpler from the standpoint of the configuration, Logstash installations using separate ElasticSearch instances are out of the scope of this post.

Installing Logstash

Logstash installation procedure is fairly simple since it is distributed as a tarball:
  • Download Logstash from the official website.
  • Extract the tarball in the designated installation directory (my personal suggestion is to avoid /usr/local because it is used by ports and to use /opt instead).

Creating an rc.d Script

An rc.d script is required in a BSD system to register a service, define its configuration and have the rc framework manage its lifetime. The following script can be used as is or as a starting point to customise your own. If used as is, be aware that the script uses the following default values:
  • Installation directory: ${logstash14_home="/opt/logstash-1.4.1"}
  • Configuration file path: ${logstash14_config="/usr/local/etc/${name}/${name}.conf"}
  • ElasticSearch data directory: ${logstash14_elastic_datadir="/var/db/logstash14"}
  • Java home: ${logstash14_java_home="/usr/local/openjdk6"}
You can override any of the supported configuration values in the /etc/rc.conf file. If, for example, you want to use an alternate Java home path, just add the following line to /etc/rc.conf setting the desired value:

logstash14_java_home="/usr/local/openjdk7"

Testing the Service

To test the Logstash service, the following command can be used:

# service logstash14 onestart

To stop it, use:

# service logstash14 onestop

To help troubleshooting any problem you might find you can enable the Logstash log, setting the logstash14_log variable to YES in the /etc/rc.conf file:

logstash14_log="YES"

The log file location is specified by the logstash14_log_file variable, whose default value is set by the service rc file (only the relevant lines are shown):

name=logstash14
logdir="/var/log"
: ${logstash14_log_file="${logdir}/${name}.log"}

The log file location can be overridden setting the logstash14_log_file variable in the /etc/rc.conf file.

Enabling the Service

Note that the rc script described above does not enable the Logstash service:

: ${logstash14_enable="NO"}

If everything works, you can enable the Logstash service just adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

logstash14_enable="YES"

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Pkg Update Fails in FreeBSD 9.2 Because of a Python Setuptools Conflict

Today I launched pkg to upgrade some binary packages installed in a FreeBSD 9.2 instance but suddenly pkg failed complaining about a locally installed python package (py27-setuptools-2.0.1) conflicting with the version required by it. The error began with the following statement, followed by a long list of repetitions of the same warning message:

WARNING: locally installed py27-setuptools-2.0.1 conflicts on /usr/local/bin/easy_install with:
- py27-setuptools27-2.0.1

All the software in this box was installed using pkg binary packages, so that at first this error sounded really strange to me.

Even though you use pkg to simplify package installations instead of compiling software from the ports collection, there is a file you should be aware of, especially if you are experiencing installation problems:

/usr/ports/UPDATING

This file contains important information about the update procedure and since binary packages are built from the port tree, the information applies even when installing with pkg.

A quick search starting from approximately the date of the last update of the affected machine pointed me in the right direction:

20140307:
  AFFECTS: users of devel/py-setuptools dependent ports
  AUTHOR: sunpoet@FreeBSD.org

  devel/py-setuptools is being used for every python ports (if USE_PYDISTUTILS
  defined) since r336553. Due to PKGORIGIN limitation, we cannot build one
  python port with python27 and the other with python33 since they require
  different setuptools versions which have same PKGORIGIN. With the addition
  of py-setuptools{27,32,33}, we could now have py27-foo and py33-bar coexist
  in one system.
  [...]

The suggested solution for pkg users is:

# pkg set -o devel/py-setuptools:devel/py-setuptoolsXX

where XX is the affected Python version. After running

# pkg set -o devel/py-setuptools:devel/py-setuptools27

pkg upgrade went fine and the problem was solved.

Monday, June 16, 2014

NSControlTextEditingDelegate Methods Are Not Called on a the Delegate of a View-Based NSTableView

I was developing a OS X Cocoa application and the time came to validate the text input by the user while editing cells of an NSTableView. My Cocoa-fu immediately suggested me to take advantage of the NSControlTextEditingDelegate protocol that specifies the following two methods to hook exactly where I need to:
  • control:textShouldBeginEditing:
  • control:textShouldEndEditing:

These two protocol methods are invoked on the delegate object. Everyday's Interface Builder outlet connection stuff, I thought, unaware I'd lose the rest of the day trying to have those method called. I then selected the text field in the editable column whose editing I wanted to be notified of:


Then I selected the Connection Inspector and connected the delegate outlet to the target object:


Finally, I implemented the two aforementioned methods on the delegate object, ran the application and... nothing happened!

The Official Documentation

I'll won't tell about the frustration I felt trying to do one of the simplest and most paradigmatic tasks in Cocoa programming: setting a delegate and implementing the corresponding protocol. Suffice it to say, I felt like I had some evident bug in front my eyes but could not notice it. Not immediately, not after a cup of tea or two, not after a hour diving into the documentation I could find.

I revised the documentation, outlets and the code over and over again, but I could not detect the problem. Then I noticed that I was not the only one struggling with this issue, although no solution was provided.

To make a long story short, the documentation I checked seemed confirmed the it should have worked, until I found especially after reading an official Apple Technical Q&A, number QA1551, titled Detecting the start and end edit sessions of a cell in NSTableView, stating the following:

A: How do I detect start and end edit sessions of a cell in NSTableView
In order to detect when a user is about to start and end an edit session of a cell in NSTableView, you need to be set as the delegate of that table and implement the following NSControl delegate methods:
- (BOOL)control:(NSControl *)control textShouldBeginEditing:(NSText *)fieldEditor;
- (BOOL)control:(NSControl *)control textShouldEndEditing:(NSText *)fieldEditor;
The table forwards the delegate message it is getting from the text view on to your delegate object using the control:textShouldEndEditing: method. This way your delegate can be informed of which control the text view field editor is acting on its behalf.

So, you should not set the editable field delegate but the table one! Fortunately, that was easy to change. I removed the connection to the delegate outlet in the text field and set the table one instead. I started the application and... nothing happened again!

At this point I felt at a loss and started to wonder whether some code in my application was interfering with the editing notification path. I created a new Cocoa application and quickly replicated the solution suggested in the Apple documentation but the result was the same: the delegate methods were not being called.

The Solution

The solution was simple, and fortunately not very different from what a Cocoa programmer expects: setting a delegate and implementing a protocol. But while the protocol was the correct one (NSControlTextEditingDelegate), the delegate was not. Better yet: they were not.

In fact, after some of tests I reached the following conclusions:
  • A cell-based NSTableView instance works as expected: setting the table delegate causes the NSControlTextEditingDelegate protocol methods to be invoked on it.
  • A view-based NSTableView instance (such as mine and almost surely most of the new NSTableView instances out there) required both the table and the field delegates to be set for the NSControlTextEditingDelegate protocol methods to be invoked.

I suspected that the aforementioned Apple Technical Q&A QA1551 document only considers the case of cell-based tables despite its date of publication: view-based tables were introduced in OS X 10.6, shipped two months before this document was issued. To dispel my doubts I decided to experiment with both kinds of table and found the behaviour described above, one for each different kind of table.

Nevertheless, and even though I dedicated a lot of time to skimming through the documentation, I was unable to find a mention of this issue in any other guide, API documentation or technical article from Apple. Even the very good Table View Programming Guide for Mac makes no mention of this "peculiarity" despite being a fairly common use case.

I hope this post helps anybody falling into the same trap to quickly solve his issues with getting NSControlTextEditingDelegate notifications to his table delegate.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

EMCCountryPickerController v. 1.3.0 Has Been Released

EMCCountryPickerController v. 1.3.0 has been released bringing the possibility of resizing the flags shown in the table cells automatically resizing the cell height.

Here is a screenshot showing flags resized to fit in a square of size 20:

Custom Flag Size - Sized to Fit into 20x20

and here is a screenshot showing flags resized to fit in a square of size 80:

Custom Flag Size - Sized to Fit into 80x80


To set the desired flag size, just use the controller's flagSize property:

countryPicker.flagSize = 80;

You can get the latest version using CocoaPods, by adding a dependency to your Podfile:

pod 'EMCCountryPickerController' ~> '1.0'

If you are already using EMCCountryPickerController, then you just need to update your pod repository index:

$ pod repo update

and then and update your outdated project dependencies running this command in the project root directory:

$ pod update

Enjoy.

Monday, June 2, 2014

OS X: Creating Packages from the Command Line - Tutorial and a Makefile - Part II

In the previous part of this tutorial we examined how pkgbuild and productbuild are used to build component packages and product archives. We also saw how hdiutil can be used to create a DMG image file to nicely package and distribute your product archive.

Although simple, the procedure is somewhat tedious: lot of typing, three different commands (four or more if we include building), lots of different paths and a many options. All of which, in a precise order, in order to satisfy the dependencies of each commands and to make sure the archives are updated whenever some component file changes.

Exactly what a Makefile is for!

A Makefile to build a Product Archive

All the steps described in the previous part of this tutorial can be automated with a proper Makefile. The Makefile we are going to create is basic, but can be used as a starting point to provide your project a set of ready to go and easy to use make targets to package it into a product archive and distribute it into a DMG file. This Makefile assumes that it is located into your XCode project root directory so that project binaries can be built and installed using

$ xcodebuild install

If this is not the case, just update the relevant action to run the build from the correct directory.

Let's start writing the Makefile in a top-down fashion. Let's add a default all target depending on anything else:
  • $(DISTDIR) is the source folder for the DMG file, where the product archive will be stored.
  • $(DEPSDIR) is an ancillary folder used to store directory. You can add more than one if component packages are stored in multiple folders, or remove it altogether if your product archive will be made up of a single component package.
  • $(PRODUCT) is the product archive.
  • $(DMGFILE) is the DMG image file creating from the source folder $(DISTDIR).
The resulting target is:

.PHONY : all
all : $(DISTDIR) $(DEPSDIR) $(PRODUCT) $(DMGFILE)

$(DISTDIR) and $(DEPSDIR) are created by the Makefile since we assume it is the Makefile that populates them:

$(DISTDIR) :
  mkdir $(DISTDIR)

$(DEPSDIR) :
  mkdir $(DEPSDIR)

$(PRODUCT), the product archive, depends on:
  • $(BINARIES), the main component binaries.
  • $(DEPENDENCY), a placeholder for the dependencies, a set of component packages to add to the product archive. If you have multiple dependencies, you will create multiple entries of this kind. You could omit this entry altogether, since productbuild would fail if a required component package is missing, but I think it is preferable to have make fail because of a missing target dependency.
  • $(COMPONENT_PFILE), the component package property list file.
  • $(COMPONENT), the component package.
  • $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE), the distribution file.
  • $(REQUIREMENTS), the requirements file.

$(PRODUCT) : $(BINARIES) $(REQUIREMENTS) \
             $(DEPENDENCY) $(COMPONENT_PFILE) \
             $(COMPONENT) $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE)
  productbuild --distribution $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) \
    --resources . \
    --package-path $(DEPSDIR) \
    --package-path $(DEPENDENCYDIR) \
    $(PRODUCT)

The $(BINARIES) are usually compiled and installed with xcodebuild:

$(BINARIES) :
  xcodebuild install

The component package property list file, $(COMPONENT_PFILE), must be created beforehand as seen in the previous post. Let's emit a meaningful error if it is missing referring to a target we will examine later on.

$(COMPONENT_PFILE) :
  @echo "Error: Missing component pfile."
  @echo "Create a component pfile with make compfiles."
  @exit 1

The main component package $(COMPONENT) depends on the binaries $(BINARIES) and the component property list file $(COMPONENT_PFILE) and it must be created with pkgbuild, as seen in the previous part of this tutorial:

$(COMPONENT) : $(BINARIES) $(COMPONENT_PFILE)
  pkgbuild --root $(BINARIES) \
  --component-plist $(COMPONENT_PFILE) \
  $(COMPONENT)

The distribution file $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE), as in the case of $(COMPONENT_PFILE), must be created beforehand. We will emit a meaningful error if it missing referring to a target we will examine later on:

$(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) :
  @echo "Error: Missing distribution file."
  @echo "Create a distribution file with make distfiles."
  @exit 1

Now the Makefile is functional except for one detail: who is going to create the two required property list files $(COMPONENT_PFILE) and $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE)? We have seen in the previous part of this tutorial that both pkgbuild and productbuild can be run in an analysis mode which analyses their input and creates an initial descriptor. We will add two targets to the Makefile that will provide the user a quick way to get initial versions of the required descriptors:

.PHONY : distfiles
distfiles : $(COMPONENT)
  productbuild --synthesize \
  --product $(REQUIREMENTS) \
  --package $(DEPENDENCY) \
  --package $(COMPONENT) \
  $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new
  @echo "Edit the $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new template to create a suitable $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) file."

.PHONY : compfiles
compfiles : $(BINARIES)
  pkgbuild --analyze \
  --root $(BINARIES) \
  $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new
  @echo "Edit the $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new template to create a suitable $(COMPONENT_PFILE) file."

Note that in the distfiles target the $(DEPENDENCY) variable is used as argument of the --package option. As explained earlier, you have to either add as many "dependency variables" as required by your product archive, or remove it altogether if the product archive only contains one component package, $(COMPONENT).

The files created by both the distfiles and the compfiles targets must be manually edited by the user and moved to their expected name by removing the .new extension.

Finally, let's add some targets to perform some housekeeping:
  • clean, to remove the DMG file and all the packages.
  • distclean, to remove the distribution files.
  • compclean, to remove the component file.

.PHONY : clean
clean :
  -rm -f $(DMGFILE) $(PRODUCT) $(COMPONENT)
  -rm -rf $(BINARIES)

.PHONY : distclean
distclean :
  -rm -f $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new

.PHONY : compclean
compclean :
  -rm -f $(COMPONENT_PFILE) $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new

Populate the Variables

So far, we have used Makefile variables in our targets and actions in order to decouple the basic Makefile structure from the details of a specific project. Now, variables must be populated for the Makefile to work in every specific project.

This is the typical variable definition block I use at the top of this kind of Makefiles:

PROGRAM = Name
DISTDIR = ./dist
DEPSDIR = ./deps
BINARIES = /tmp/Name.dst
DMGFILE = $(PROGRAM).dmg
PRODUCT = $(DISTDIR)/$(PROGRAM).pkg
COMPONENT = $(DEPSDIR)/$(PROGRAM)Component.pkg
COMPONENT_PFILE = $(PROGRAM).plist
DISTRIBUTION_FILE = distribution.dist
REQUIREMENTS = requirements.plist

PROGRAM is a shared fragment which is typically set to the XCode project name. The DMG file name DMGFILE, the product archive name PRODUCT and the binary installation directory BINARIES are all initialised using this prefix. If want to customise any of these names or adjust any path to your needs, just modify accordingly the corresponding variable.

Use It

The default Makefile target, all, can be executed by simply invoking

$ make

If everything works correctly, you will find a DMG file image in your execution directory containing your product archive.

Conclusion

In this tutorial we have covered the basic tasks every OS X developer should master in order to build product packages for his own projects. Furthermore, the skeleton of a Makefile performing all the required operations has been provided. This is only the beginning of the work of creating an installer, since most of an installer properties and requirements must be manually set by the developer. However, the tedious part of building component packages and creating product packages can be automated in a relatively simple Makefile that I hope it will be useful to many of you.

OS X: Creating Packages from the Command Line - Tutorial and a Makefile - Part I

Over the years Apple has been removing useful tools from its flagship IDE, XCode, and PackageMaker was one of them. It didn't take me by surprise, though. But while on the one hand I understand that Apple would like most users to download software from the Mac App Store (for which plenty of functionality has been baked into XCode), on the other hand removing PackageMaker means leaving developers without a useful and simple graphical tool to build their packages. And even though you can still download it separately at the Mac Dev Center (search for a package called XCode Auxiliary Tools), PackageMaker is clearly an unsupported tool of the past, and you'd better rely on the current ones: pkgbuild and productbuild.

Both pkgbuild and productbuild are command-line tools and they provide developers all the functionality they need to (man page citation):
  • Build OS X installer component packages.
  • Build a product archive for the OS X installer.
  • Build a product archive for the Mac App Store.
The only issue with them is they do not have a GUI and XCode does not publish their functionality through its UI.

In this blog post I will give a brief overview of how this tools can be invoked to build your own packages. You will be able to:
  • Create your own product archives containing multiple component packages.
  • Create a DMG disk image for your product archive.

In the next part of this tutorial we will see how we can write a Makefile to perform all the commands required to package your product and streamline your workflow, maybe executing it in a custom XCode target of yours.

Using pkgbuild

pkgbuild is the tool used to create component packages, the building blocks of product archives, the final products users install. Although component packages are packages themselves and you could distribute them and install them, building a product archive is in my opinion always preferable. Besides, component packages cannot be submitted to the Mac App Store.

pkgbuild main mode of operation is driven by a property list file which specifies the configuration of the component package to create. Developers do not need to write this file from scratch though: pkgbuild provides an analyse mode of operation that analyses the contents found in the specified root path and outputs a template component property list file that can be used as a starting point.

Assuming we want to build a component package for an OS X application, we first invoke pkgbuild in analyse mode on a release installation directory to create an initial component property list file:

$ pkgbuild --analyze \
  --root /tmp/Name.dst \
  NameComponent.plist

The root path for an application project is an XCode project property (Project/Build Settings/Deployment/Installation Build Products Location) defaulting to /tmp/$(PROJECT_NAME) that can be specified when performing the xcodebuild install target by setting the DSTROOT variable.

When run, pkgbuild will create a file called NameComponent.plist containing default configuration values such as the following (output may vary):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
  <dict>
    <key>BundleHasStrictIdentifier</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleIsRelocatable</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleIsVersionChecked</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleOverwriteAction</key>
    <string>upgrade</string>
    <key>RootRelativeBundlePath</key>
    <string>Applications/Name.app</string>
  </dict>
</array>
</plist>

Tweak your component property file according to your needs (man pkgbuild for detailed information about the available configuration property) and when the configuration is ready pkgbuild can be run in its main mode to create the component package (split lines for better readability):

$ pkgbuild --root /tmp/Name.dst \
  --component-plist NameComponent.plist \
  NameComponent.pkg

Here, we use NameComponent.pkg as the name of the component package to distinguish from the name of the product archive package.

Sign Packages with pkgbuild

pkgbuild lets you sign packages using an "identity" (a certificate and the corresponding private key) that must be installed into one of your keychains. To sign a component package, invoke pkgbuild with the --sign identityName option where identityName is the common name (CN) of the desired certificate.

If you are creating a signed product, for example if you want to submit it to the Mac App Store, signing all its component packages is not required: you should only sign the product archive using productbuild.

Using productbuild

Let's now suppose you have created two component packages for your product:
  • NameComponent.pkg, created in the previous section.
  • MyFramework.pkg, a dependency of NameComponent.pkg (created as seen in the previous section).

productbuild is the tool used to create product archives, that is: packages to be installed by users or to be submitted to the Mac App Store. A product archive is made up of one or more component packages and in this tutorial we will create one containing the two aforementioned components.

Similarly to pkgbuild, productbuild runs in multiple modes (currently the available modes are 5, see the man page for detailed information), two of them being:
  • Analysis mode, to create an initial distribution file.
  • Create a product archive from a distribution file.
A distribution file is to the product archive what the component property list is for the component package: it includes all the configuration of the product archive, including (see the man page for detailed information):
  • A product license.
  • A product README file.
  • The list of component packages.
  • Constraints (such as minimum OS version).

To create the initial distribution file for our product archive, we run productbuild in analysis mode specifying the list of component packages to include. In this case we specify the --synthesize option to run productbuild in analysis mode, two component packages with multiple --package options, a requirement file (described in the next section) and the name of the resulting distribution file distribution.plist (split lines for better readability):

$ productbuild --synthesize \
  --product requirements.plist \
  --package MyFrameworkComponent.pkg \
  --package NameComponent.pkg \
  distribution.plist

Once productbuild creates the initial distribution file, you can manually modify it to satisfy your needs.

Adding a License

If you want to add a license to your product archive, prepare a license file in one of the supported formats (including rtf, html and plain txt) and add its reference to the distribution file using a <license/> element to the distribution file root element <installer-gui-script/>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<installer-gui-script minSpecVersion="2">
  <title>Name</title>
  ...
  <license file="LICENSE.html"/>
  ...
</installer-gui-script>

Adding a README

A README file can be added using a procedure similar to what we have used to add a license file, but in this case the name of the element is <readme/>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<installer-gui-script minSpecVersion="2">
  <title>Name</title>
  ...
  <license file="LICENSE.html"/>
  <readme file="README.html"/>
  ...
</installer-gui-script>

Creating a Requirements File

Requirements can be specified in a requirement property list file (see man page for detailed information). A requirement property list file is a property list whose element is a dictionary in which may constraints can be expressed using a series of keys, including (but not limited to):
  • os: Minimum allowable OS version.
  • arch: Supported architectures.
  • ram: Minimum required RAM.

To specify a dependency on OS X 10.9, we can create an empty property list file whose first child is a dictionary in which we add an os key with the constraint we need:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>os</key>
  <array>
    <string>10.9</string>
  </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Creating the Product Archive

Once the distribution file is ready, productbuild can be run to finally create the product archive. In this case we have to specify the distribution file with the --distribution option, the resource path where resource files are found (such as license and README, even if they are in the current working directory) the package path where component packages can be found using the --package-path options (in case they are not in the current working directory) and the name of the product package:

$ productbuild \
  --distribution distribution.plist
  --resources .
  --package-path path/to/MyFrameworkComponent.pkg
  --package-path path/to/NameComponent.pkg
  Name.pkg

Signing the Product Archive

As explained in the case of pkgbuild, productbuild lets you sign the product archive using the identity (a certificate common name) specified with the --sign option. The specified certificate must be available in an accessible keychain, otherwise the path of a specific keychain must be specified using the --keychain option.

A product archive can even be signed after it has been created using the productsign command (see the man page for further information).

Creating a DMG Disk Image

OS X installers are often distributed in a DMG disk image file. If you want to create a DMG file containing your product archive (and optionally other files) you have to:
  • Put all the files your want to include in a folder (the source folder in hdiutil jargon).
  • Use the hdiutil command-line utility to create a DMG disk image from the source folder.

Assuming we have created the ./dist source folder where we have copied the Name.pkg product archive, we can use the following command to create a Name.dmg DMG file (split lines for better readability) named My Product:

$ hdiutil create \
  -volname "My Product" \
  -srcfolder ./dist \
  -ov \
  Name.dmg

The optional -ov option is used to overwrite an existing DMG file.

A Makefile to Put It All Together

In the next part of this tutorial we will examine an example Makefile that can be used as a starting point to perform all the operations described in this post.

EMCCountryPickerController v. 1.2.0 Has Been Released

EMCCountryPickerController v. 1.2.0 has been released bringing a new localisation in the Spanish (es) language:


You can get the latest version using CocoaPods, by adding a dependency to your Podfile:

pod 'EMCCountryPickerController' ~> '1.0'

If you are already using EMCCountryPickerController, then you just need to update your pod repository index:

$ pod repo update

and then and update your outdated project dependencies running this command in the project root directory:

$ pod update

Enjoy.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

EMCCountryPickerController: A Country Picker View Controller for iOS

EMCCountryPickerController is a view controller I've built that lets you choose a country from a searchable list that includes all the countries assigned an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes.



EMCCountryPickerController is extremely simple to use:
  • It just has to be presented.
  • The user interacts with the user interface and selects a country.
  • The selection is communicated to a delegate, which dismisses the view controller and uses the results.
Comprehensive usage details, as well as a complete demo project, can be found in its GitHub repository.

This component features also has the following additional features:
  • Country name can be localised (some localisations are already provided, such as English and Italian).
  • Flag borders can be drawn and customised.
  • Flags can be optionally turned off.

The controller includes the flag of all the available countries, rasterised from a SVG file in the public domain. The controller is distributed with the BSD 3-clause license.

Installation

Besides grabbing the sources and the resource files from its GitHub repository, the quickest way to use the controller is using CocoaPods and adding a reference to the EMCCountryPickerController pod to your project Podfile:

pod 'EMCCountryPickerController', '~> 1.1'

Enjoy.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Autoconf Macros to Check for C++11 Features in the Header

C++11 introduces a lot of improvements and new features to the C++ language and the C++ Standard Library. Compilers and libraries are still implementing such features and it is likely your toolchain is still missing some piece, even though the ones I am using (GCC and CLang) are catching up quickly.

While on the one hand the GNU Build System is mostly used to build C projects and an historical lack of C++ macros is suffered, on the other hand there were no C++11 specific macro to check for library compliance.

For this reason, I began writing my own set of macros some weeks ago starting from what I needed at the time: C++11 features in the <functional> header. So far, I have written the following macros which cover all the new C++11 features in that header:

All the macros except AX_CXX_HAVE_PLACEHOLDERS were submitted to the GNU Autoconf Archive some weeks ago and are already available for use: just follow the link on the macro name, download the m4 file and use it. I submitted AX_CXX_HAVE_PLACEHOLDERS this morning and I expect it to be available shortly: I will update this post as soon as this macro has been accepted.

For those who want to contribute to this set of macros, you can check out their GitHub repository.