Migrating to Snow Leopard for Rails Development

As always happens when upgrading or installing, it seems, I did run into a few problems.

Errors and Workarounds

Problem: Git doesn't want to install.

Error:

ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libiconv.dylib, file is not of required architecture

Workaround:

MacPorts is to blame. To uninstall MacPorts, use

sudo rm -rf \
/opt/local \
/etc/manpaths.d/macports \
/etc/paths.d/macports \
/Applications/DarwinPorts \
/Applications/MacPorts \
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
/Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
/Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
/Library/Tcl/macports1.0

(Thanks, Simon Engledew)

Problem: MySQL gem doesn't install.

Error:

ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension mysql

Workaround:

Make sure you installed the latest version of MySQL, the MySQL Preference Pane, and that you started the MySQL server before trying to install the gem. iCoreTech has directions for installing MySQL and MySQL gem on Snow Leopard.

Other Options

HiveLogic has another method for installing Git on Snow Leopoard. I was having trouble with the package installers, and doing it "by hand" via HiveLogic's instructions worked well.

My project uses RMagick. RMagick's DMG installer wouldn't work for me either. I was able to install RMagick from source using a script from OnRails.org.

svn+ssh://user@host/repos

you'll likely get an error such as

svn: Expected FS format '2'; found format '4'

which means that you're repository was created in a newer version of SVN than the version you run when you call svn+ssh. Using Jeremy's instructions results in two versions of Subversion being available on your server - one in /usr/local and one in /opt/subversion. In order to use the one in /opt/subversion (the newest one) through an SSH tunnel, you need to make some SSH configuration changes on your server.

Getting svn+ssh to work requires:
1. Set (or uncomment) PermitUserEnvironment Yes in /etc/sshd_config (on server)
2. Add PATH=/opt/subversion/bin:$PATH to ~/.ssh/environment (on server; may have to create the environment file)
3. restart SSH (on server) with sudo /sbin/service ssh stop and sudo /sbin/service ssh start
Ta da!

Thanks for the jumpstart, Jeremy!

As a commenter points out, Syphone doesn't work with current or recent iPhone OS. Don't waste your time.

Updated 2/21/2009

Syphone is a Mac freeware application that allows you to archive your iPhone SMS messages to your Mac hard drive. Here's a screenshot from my messages with Google Local:

Syphone screenshot

If you're using iPhone firmware 2.1+, you may get "No iPhones found!" in the drop down next to "iPhone" there near the top left. If so, go into Syphone's Preferences and uncheck the box marked "Run helper app in the background." Restart Syphone, and your iPhone and its messages should appear. You can change the colors, sort order, and export your messages to XML, PDF, or TXT.

Originally, I'd posted that I was unable to get the XML export to work. Ben commented that he was successful using XML export for one contact at a a time. This morning I tried again making sure I had one and only one contact selected. Success! Here's a screen shot of the XML output:

Syphone XML output

Now I'm definitely tempted to study text messaging. Any workgroups out there who all use iPhones and want to be in a study of text messaging at work?

Syphone stores its database in /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup.

To get your own virtual Windows 7 machine, visit TuxDistro for a torrent. Yes, the virtual machine will work in Fusion on a Mac. Downloading the zip file through Vuze took me about 7 hours today.

First impressions? My goodness, Win7 boots fast. After I updated VMWare tools and clicked "restart," I switched back to Flock to Tweet about my new virtual machine. By the time I had logged in and read the first couple tweets my friends had posted, my Win7 machine was waiting for me to login. That was insanely fast. Certainly beat the pants off the Vista virtual machine I use every day. The new taskbar is a nice touch; it uses icons for running programs so it's easy to tell on which one you should click. I had no problems installing and running OpenOffice or Netflix Watch Instantly. I'll post again when I've given Win7 a true test. Also, some time this weekend I'll put a Win7 virtual machine on the Linux box downstairs and see how that goes. I got VMWare Player, a free program for running virtual machines, installed this morning, but then I had work to do. Stay tuned.

I don't always have my external hard drives plugged in since I'm rocking a laptop and am pretty mobile. Time Machine complained every hour, on the hour, that it couldn't find the drive it wanted for long enough to annoy me. Eventually it stops complaining about not being able to find the drive it wants.

Even if you leave the drive plugged in while working at your base location, for me it's my home office, Time Machine sucks up resources to do those intermittent backups. Even when I'm working on my dissertation, my data is not so mission-critical that it needs to be backed up every hour. Mac OS X Hints has a solution for changing the backup interval too.

ChronoSync can do in 39 minutes what it takes Time Machine over an hour to do. SuperDuper! beats the initial setup by about 20 minutes. So, the ChronoSync + SuperDuper! setup saves me resources, time, and headache.

One more thing - I have an Airport Extreme router, and I hang a hard drive off it via USB also. That drive is open to anyone on our home network. Apple's not kidding when they say Time Machine does not support network backups except to Time Capsule. When I tried using Time Machine to backup to that USB drive off the Airport Extreme, it would run my CPU up to about 80% and break many of my network connections. You may have better luck there. I didn't troubleshoot or try to fix it; I just gave up.

I ordered a rocstor ROCRAID from mwave last week, and that should be here on Tuesday. I'll try out RAID storage for my stuff and see how that goes. It has FireWire connections too, and I'm interested to see how much faster that can really be. I really don't want to have to give my laptop to Apple for a week. They won't let me keep the hard drive and send it in with a different one, and they won't give me a loaner. So I paid $2500 to have a laptop 98% of the time. Would I get it 100% of the time if I'd spent $3000? Sorry for the minirant, but having to get my MacBook Pro's fan fixed is what prompted this latest round of backup chatter.