Is there a way to get nightly builds of KStars and Ekos/INDI for Mac? I searched the forum but could only find it for KStars on Windows. Many thanks in advance.


Clear skies, Wouter

No, not yet. Several of us ported KStars to Mac about 2 years ago by writing a complex script that goes through all the build steps. The script has been updated and improved many times in the last couple of years, and keeps having to be changed as dependencies break and change. The nightly builds require craft pretty much exclusively to build programs. We do use craft now in the process, since 2017, but as of right now, craft is not set up to build a large number of the dependencies that we need for a full build of KStars for Mac. Our script currently builds the dependencies (including INDI), then uses craft to build KStars, then copies it all into the app bundle, and then finishes it up. I did some preliminary work this past summer to try to make some craft recipes that could build most of KStars for Mac exclusively in craft. This would be much better. But then I got very busy again this fall with my "real" job and I haven't had as much time. I am planning to try to work on it again maybe this weekend, but it will be a little while till nightly builds are available.

Thanks,

Rob

Thanks Rob. I didn't know this was such a complex build process. In any case, take your time. The latest release for Mac works very well and I was merely eager to try out some of the new features on Mac but I can do that on Linux as well.


Wouter

Yes it is fairly complex. This is where the script is located if you want to see: github.com/jamiesmith/kstars-on-osx

I haven't run it in a couple of weeks though, so I don't know that everything is working perfectly right now. The last time I ran it was at the last release, for 2.9.8. We are planning a 3.0 release and there should be a lot of great changes in that one. Hopefully by then we can also get the true craft build with new "recipes" up and running too so we don't have to rely on this script as much any more, or maybe we can make this script simpler.