Nexus Data Editor running on Mac OS X

In an earlier post I expressed my amazement that my venerable Nexus Data Editor (NDE) still had users, meaning I had to rebuild the installer so users could install NDE on Windows Vista. Now, Thomas Hauser has gone one better and created an installer for Mac OS X. Given that NDE is a Windows-only program, this is quite a feat. Thomas uses Mike Kroenenberg's (@k3erg) WineBottler to create a version of NDE that can be run on a Mac. WineBottler builds on Wine, which enables Windows software to run on Unix-like operating systems.

To run NDE on a Mac, first download WineBottler from http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/ and install. Then grab the file NDE.dmg Thomas has created. Install the file NDE in your Applications file and run it. Note that you will need X11 installed on your Mac. If you don't have this it should be on the installation disk that came with your computer. After a short pause you should see NDE appear in a X11 window. Below is a screen shot showing NDE editing the example file (Bembidion.nex) that comes with the program:

Many thanks to Thomas for his efforts in packaging NDE with Winebottler, and for making available the NDE.dmg file he created.

Memcached, Mac OS X, and PHP

Thinking about ways to improve the performance of some of my web servers I've begun to toy with Memcached. These notes are to remind me how to set it up (I'm using Mac OS X 10.5, Apache 2 and PHP 5.2.10, as provided by Apple). Erik's blog post Memcached with PHP on Mac OS X has a step-by-step guide, based on the post Setup a Memcached-Enabled MAMP Sandbox Environment by Nate Haug, and I've basically followed the steps they outline.

1. Install the Memcached service on Mac OS X: Follow the instructions in Nate Haug's post.


2. Install Memcache PHP Extension: Apple's PHP doesn't come with the PECL package for memcache so download it. To compile it go:
   

   
   phpize
   ./configure
   make
   sudo make install
   

   
   One important point. If you are running 64-bit Mac OS X (as I am), ./configure by itself won't build a usable extension. However, a comment by Matt on Erik's original post provides the solution. Instead of just ./configure, type this at the command prompt:
   
   
   MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load" ./configure
   
   
   Then follow the rest of Erik's instructions for adding the extension to your copy of PHP.


3. Restart Apache: You can do this by restarting Web sharing in System preferences. Use the phpinfo(); command to check that the extension is working. You should see something like this:
   
   
   
   If you don't see this, something's gone wrong. The Apache web log may help (for example, that's where I discovered that I had the problem reported by several people who commented on Erik's post.


4. You can start the memcached daemon like this:
   

   
   # /bin/sh
   memcached -m 1 -l 127.0.0.1 -p 11211 -d
   

Now, I just need to explore how to actually use this...