This Readme file describes how to prepare a Mac computer for eric. The recommended way to do this is to install the software packages from the distributors web pages. Because some software is only available as source and compilation is a bit tricky because of the dependencies, these packages should be installed via a packaging system. The recommended one is MacPorts because of it's completeness. This is the way described below.
Open the Mac App Store and enter "xcode" into the search entry at the top right of the window. From the list of results select the Xcode entry. Xcode is provided free of charge. On the Xcode page select the button to get the package. Follow the usual procedure to start the download. Once the download has finished open the applications folder and select the "Install Xcode" entry. In contrast to the Xcode 3 procedure described above, the installer does not ask for a selection of sub-packages.
Although Mac OS X comes with a python installation it is recommended to install the python package provided by the Python community. Download it from
http://www.python.org/download/
After the download finished open the downloaded package and install it.
Note: The Python documentation can be found in these locations
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/English.lproj/Documentation/index.html /Applications/Python 3.4/Python Documentation.html
Download the Qt5 package from
After the download finished open the downloaded package and install it. The tools (e.g. Designer, Linguist) can be found in the location
The documentation can be found in these locations
˜/Qt<version>/<version>/<compiler>/qtdoc (HTML format) ˜/Qt<version>/<version>/<compiler>/ (QtHelp format)
The translation files can be found in this location
˜/Qt<version>/<version>/<compiler>//translations
Download the QScintilla2 source code package from
http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/qscintilla/download
After the download has finished open a Finder window and extract the downloaded archive in the Downloads folder (or any other folder of your choice). Change to the Qt4Qt5 directory within the extracted folder and enter these commands in a terminal window
qmake qscintilla.pro make -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) sudo make install
Download the sip source code package from
http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/download
After the download has finished open a Finder window and extract the downloaded archive in the Downloads folder (or any other folder of your choice). Change to the extracted folder and enter these commands in a terminal window
python3 configure.py make -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) sudo make install
Download the PyQt5 source code package from
http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/download5
After the download has finished open a Finder window and extract the downloaded archive in the Downloads folder (or any other folder of your choice). Change to the extracted folder and enter these commands in a terminal window
python3 configure.py -c -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) make -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) sudo make install
Change back to the extracted QScintilla2 directory and in there change to the Python subdirectory. Enter these commands in a terminal window
python3 configure.py --pyqt=PyQt5 -c -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) make -j x (number of cores including hyper threaded ones) sudo make install
MacPorts is a packaging system for the Mac. I recommend to install it to use some applications and libraries, that are a bit tricky to compile from source or for which the supplier doesn't offer ready built Mac OS X packages. In order to install MacPorts get the proper disk image (for Lion or Snow Leopard) from
http://www.macports.org/install.php
and install it with the usual procedure. You may read about it's usage via
http://guide.macports.org/#using.port
For a recipe on how to update MacPorts and the installed ports see the end of this file (Appendix A)
eric6 includes the capability to perform spell checking of certain parts of the sources. This is done via enchant which works with various spell checking libraries as it's backend. It depends upon aspell and hunspell. In order to install aspell enter this command in a terminal window
sudo port install aspell
This installs aspell and a bunch of dependancies. Once aspell has been installed install the dictionaries of your desire. To get a list of available dictionaries enter
port search aspell-dict
Then install them with a command like this
sudo port install aspell-dict-de aspell-dict-en
pyenchant depends on hunspell as well. Enter these commands to install it
sudo port install hunspell
This installs hunspell and a bunch of dependancies. Once hunspell has been installed, install the dictionaries of your desire. To get a list of hunspell dictionaries enter
port search hunspell-dict
Then install them with a command like this
sudo port install hunspell-dict-de_DE
replacing the 'de_DE' part with the language code of your desire.
In order to install enchant and penchant via MacPorts enter these commands
sudo port install enchant
Install pyenchant using the pip utility. To do this just enter this
in a console window
sudo pip3 install pyenchant
In order to test, if everything worked ok open a Python shell and enter these commands
>>> import enchant
>>> enchant.list_dicts()If you get an error (ImportError for the first command or no dictionaries are show for the second command) please recheck the installation checks.
Mac OS X already provides subversion. However, best performance for eric6 is gained with the pysvn interface to subversion. Therefore it is recommended to install pysvn. Get pysvn via
http://pysvn.tigris.org/project_downloads.html
After the download finished open the downloaded package and install it.
In order to test, if everything worked ok, open a Python shell and enter these commands
>>> import pysvn
>>> pysvn.versionThis should print the pysvn version as a tuple like (1, 7, 10, 1584). If
you get an error please check your installation.
- Note: Mac OS X Lion provides Subversion 1.6.x. When downloading pysvn make sure
- to download the variant compiled against that version. This is important because the working copy format of Subversion 1.7.x is incompatible to the old one.
Get Mercurial from
Extract the downloaded package and install it.
Get the latest eric6 distribution package from
http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/eric-download.html
Just follow the link on this page to the latest download.
Extract the downloaded package and language packs into a directory and install it with this command
sudo python3 install.py
This step concludes the installation procedure. You are ready for the first start of eric6.
The eric6 installer created an application bundle in the location
/Applications/eric6
You may drag it to the dock to have it ready.
When eric6 is started for the first time it will recognize that it hasn't been configured yet. Therefore it will start the configuration dialog with the default configuration. At this point you could simply close the dialog by pressing the OK button. However, it is strongly recommended that you go through the configuration pages to get a feeling for the configuration possibilities.
It is recommended to configure at least the path to the Qt tools on the Qt page and the paths to the various help pages on the Help Documentation page. The values to be entered are given above in the Python and Qt installation sections.
eric6 provides an extension mechanism via plug-ins. Some of them require the installation of additional python packages. The plug-ins themselves are available via the Plugin Repository from within eric6.
pylint is a tool to check Python sources for issues. Install pylint using
the pip utility. To do this just enter this in a console window
sudo pip3 install pylint
cx_Freeze is a tool that packages a Python application into executables. It is
like py2exe and py2app. Install cx_Freeze using the pip utility. To do
this just enter this in a console window
sudo pip3 install cx_Freeze
This completes this installation instruction. Please enjoy using eric6 and let the world know about it.
In order to update MacPorts and the installed packages enter these commands in a terminal window
sudo port selfupdate (update MacPorts itself) sudo port upgrade outdated (update outdated installed ports)