From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 26 2005 - 14:25:13 CDT

Hirsh,
  Compiling VMD is complicated, it isn't intended for everyone to get into,
this is why we distribute binaries. You don't even need STRIDE or SURF
in order to compile VMD itself, but you'll have a lot of other very
MacOS X-specific issues to deal with which are not specifically documented
in the VMD compilation instructions because they are issues with other
packages like Tcl/Tk, FLTK, etc. If you want to build from source on OSX,
you're going to have to be prepared to deal with all of that.

If you can hold out a bit longer, I should be able to give you a test build
of VMD with Python that behaves correctly with numpy etc, but I need more
time than you've given me to provide this. If you have constructive feedback
to give on how the compilation documentation can be improved, I'm all
ears, but complaining to the user community at large isn't a useful way
to solve that specific problem.

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 03:17:32PM -0400, Hirsh Nanda wrote:
> Has anyone else succesfully gotten python and numpy to work with VMD
> on a Mac OSX 10.3 platform. The python libraries linked in an earlier
> post don't seem to work. I've been trying the compile the source code
> option but have run into numerous problems. In particular the link to
> the source code for the STRIDE and SURF plugins are broken or
> outdated. And in general the documentation for compiling VMD is not
> helpful, it needs to explain the procedure in significantly more
> detail. I've basically hit a wall here, if anyone has had any success
> with VMD & python on their Mac please help me out.
>
> -Hirsh
>
> On 4/20/05, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Will,
> > Building VMD isn't all that hard actually, the hardest part tends to
> > be building the various libraries that VMD links against. Python has
> > been "interesting" on MacOS X. I'm still in the middle of sorting
> > out various stuff with our MacOS X Python build. Since you'll be
> > compiling your own VMD binaries, it shouldn't be hard, you could
> > even choose to use the Apple provided Python if you wanted to.
> > In my case, I attempt to package the same rev of Python on all of
> > the architectures, to ensure a degree of consistency in the behavior
> > of VMD and because I don't have time to maintain more than one rev
> > at once. For your own purposes, you can choose any version that
> > is stable enough for your taste on the platform(s) of your choosing.
> >
> > John
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 12:32:05PM -0700, William Sheffler wrote:
> > > Hi John
> > >
> > > I'm about to buy a 17" powerbook, and I was wondering how hard it is to
> > > compile VMD on a mac. I've tried and failed on linux before, so I'm a
> > > little nervous. I'm going to need a fully operational python interpreter
> > > built in. Can you make any suggestions? Also, what are the advantages
> > > and disadvantages of writting a VMD plug-in (Extension?)?
> > >
> > > I'm really looking forward to this Rosetta/VMD project! I'm probably
> > > going to get started once the powerbook order comes thru.
> > >
> > > -Will
> >
> > --
> > NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> > Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> > University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> > Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> > WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
> >

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078