Tag: mac

Weechat on OSX

This is recording how I got weechat on OSX updated to 4.0.4, and how I fixed /script to work as well, thanks to some helpful folks on IRC.

One of the slight annoyances with using weechat on OSX is that the Homebrew version is still 3.8 or so. I have multiple systems, with weechat on all of them, and OSX is the outlier in being outdated.

The #weechat channel on libera was horribly useful, and got everything straightened out, with first updating to 4.0.4, and then fixing a problem with scripts. I’m writing up what I did here, so it’s easily searchable.

First, the upgrade to 4.0.4. It’s important to know that while I did all this, I didn’t originate any of it. I can’t claim credit, and don’t. I was doing things that others suggested. (The users in question were trygveaa and R2robot; I don’t know them outside of those names.)

The first thing I did was run brew edit weechat, to edit the weechat recipe file for Homebrew. The values I needed to change were the url and hash values for the downloaded file; they’re lines 4 and 5 for me, and this is what I changed them to:

url "https://weechat.org/files/src/weechat-4.0.4.tar.xz" sha256 "ae5f4979b5ada0339b84e741d5f7e481ee91e3fecd40a09907b64751829eb6f6"

After that, it’s a simple matter of running:
brew reinstall -s weechat
… which should download weechat from source (and thus get 4.0.4) and install it from there.

Now, running weechat gives me 4.0.4; that’s one problem down!

~ > weechat -v
4.0.4
~ >

The other problem was that /script didn’t work; it would tell me it was trying to download the scripts from an external server, and… that’s it. No progress. No scripts window, no nothing. That’s suboptimal, because there are a few scripts I find highly useful.

I got it working by setting an environment variable. I actually tried two of them, but only one turned out to be significant:

export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES

With that set, /script downloaded the list of scripts, and I could install, autoload, et cetera. I had also tried setting WEECHAT_HOME to a different location (also a suggestion), and that worked as long as I had the fork safety disabled – and removing WEECHAT_HOME left my configuration where it was “supposed to be” (the default) and /script still worked, so the OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY is what made the difference.

Installing GraalVM on OSX with SDKMan

Want to install GraalVM on OSX? It’s easy.

First, get SDKMan. Trust me. You want it. Almost as much as brew, if you’re doing anything with the JVM. You’ll want to install bash – via brew – because SDKMan uses bash and the OSX bash shell is badly outdated.

Once you have SDKMan installed and available in your shell, execute the following command:

$ sdk install java 19.3.0.2.r11-grl

If you don’t install it as the default JVM, you can select it as the current JVM with this:

$ sdk default java 19.3.0.2.r11-grl

You can check it with java -version:

$ java -version
openjdk version "11.0.5" 2019-10-15
OpenJDK Runtime Environment GraalVM CE 19.3.0.2 (build 11.0.5+10-jvmci-19.3-b06)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM GraalVM CE 19.3.0.2 (build 11.0.5+10-jvmci-19.3-b06, mixed mode, sharing)

This installs the latest GraalVM installation for Java 11, as of when this was written. Enjoy!

Busy, new music, Getting Things Done, data import

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been busy. But now that I’m here…

  • I’m still not thrilled with the Gutenberg editor. It’s okay, but I just don’t care for it.
  • I’ve been working on music, and that’s been eating what time I have left after work and family, so I haven’t been writing much. This is a problem; the whole point behind these is that I should be able to fire them off pretty quickly and easily. It’s a brittle process.
  • A friend suggested Todoist, over Agenda. Will have to try it again. There are tons of GTD-like to-do applications, and all of them so far get it slightly wrong for me… or maybe I’m not integrating them well enough yet. Agenda’s pretty good but Mac-only. Until I’ve purged every other OS from my work environment, that’s… ungood. (And I’m not going to purge every other OS from my work environment.)
  • Running a giant data import is great, until you realize you’ve done it wrong but you’re already a long time into a giant, days-long process.

Metrics, new Macbook charger, testcontainers

Things I’m learning about, on this day of verbs:

  • “What metrics matter: A guide for open source projects” has a lot of good information. It’s interesting.
  • I get to buy a new Macbook charger today; my “old” one is giving out, I think, which is frustrating.
  • Testcontainers looks like an interesting project. I may have to try it out. It’s enabling.
  • There is an Atlas of Endangered Alphabets. It’s fascinating.
  • Apparently January 18th is “Winnie the Pooh Day.” I had no idea. Even though we describe our cats in terms of Tiggerisms – and once had a cat named Tigger – it’s… vaguely confusing.
  • My exercise routine remains, but parts of it are missing this past week – namely, some of the short walks.

Synergy 1.6 beta released

The Synergy Project announced the release of Synergy 1.6 beta, which among other things offers an autoconfiguration mechanism. Synergy allows you to use one mouse and keyboard for multiple computers – almost like a software KVM (although chances are they’d say it was exactly like a software KVM.)

I’d tried it before on Fedora and Windows; it was “problematic” for me (as in: it didn’t work.) It was a little frustrating, because one of my friends uses it constantly and he says it works perfectly for him. I’d even contributed to the project, because it seemed so valuable as a concept… but not for me, alas.

The new version, however, works like a champ on my iMac and Windows computers; I haven’t tried it on Fedora yet. (I’m not likely to, for various reasons, mostly related to laziness.) It’s actually really handy; now I can start reducing the explosions of keyboards and mice on my desk.

Considering I presently have three of each lying around, plus various MIDI controllers, anything that reduces the clutter is worth investment and praise.

Good job, Synergy. People: help support the project.