[Users] Building Claws from git source with gtk-2

[David Fletcher]

Jim Pachowski jimmy.patch at gmail.com wrote:

> Can you provide step-by-step on compiling Claws GTK2 on a Mac please.

Hi Jim,

At a high level it was as simple as downloading the 3.19.1 sources,
unzipping them, opening a terminal window, and then I used:

/configure --disable-archive-plugin --disable-dillo-plugin
--disable-notification-plugin

That just eliminated things for which I don't have the dependencies, and
don't want to bother sorting it out.

The harder work was getting GTK2 on Mac at all! I used Homebrew (
https://brew.sh/ ) originally, but that moves on pretty fast and no
longer supports my outdated version of MacOS. I therefore installed a
few things manually as well on top of that. Lack of support from
Homebrew is why I've stayed with GTK2 for now rather than using GTK3 on
the Mac.

Things I have notes about installing manually:

libetpan - installed from their git repository using ./configure
--enable-debug

I had a particular issue with the ical library which is needed to read
meeting invites that come attached to emails. The libraries below were
needed to get that to work, but if you don't need it then you don't
need these.

International Components for Unicode
icu4c-69_1-src.tgz
/configure --prefix=/usr/local

libxml2-v2.9.11.tar.bz2
/configure

libical-3.0.11.tar.gz
run cmake and build it following their instructions.

I have notes about needing the following in the past, but either these
are no longer needed, or I've set my system up so I don't need to
re-enter them:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/gettext/bin:$PATH"'
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib:/usr/local/opt/gettext/lib:"${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
CPATH=/usr/local/opt/openssl/include:/usr/local/opt/gettext/include:"${CPATH}"
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/pkgconfig:"${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH CPATH PKG_CONFIG_PATH

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/gettext/lib
-L/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/gettext/include"

A lot of this might be easier if you're on a version of MacOS that
Homebrew supports. Alternatively it might be long term easier to forget
Homebrew and install the GTK libraries manually so things are more under
your control. I also installed the spell checking things through
Homebrew - https://abiword.github.io/enchant/ and aspell. But again, you
will have more control if you in stall them manually. There's probably
multiple items I've forgotten here that I won't know about until
moving to a new mac.

Best wishes, David.