README - Carbon API for perl on Mac OS X

Mac::Carbon is a collection of perl modules for accessing the Carbon API under Mac OS X. It is a port of the Toolbox modules written by Matthias Neeracher for MacPerl.

See the documentation in Mac::Carbon for more implementation details, bugs, etc.

Mac::Carbon does not run under 64-bit perl. There are workarounds listed in "64-BIT PERL" in Mac::Carbon. It does build with a "fat" 64-bit perl, for use with 32-bit mode.

There are probably a lot of bugs, especially in Carbon.h. Bugs are listed in "Known Bugs" in Mac::Carbon; please feel free to report more. Patches are welcome, too, of course. For large patches, such as stuff for test suites and building, please do coordinate with me before spending much time on it.

	http://projects.pudge.net/

These modules all build under Mac OS, but it is recommended you build them as a part of MacPerl itself, or at least under the MacPerl source (version 5.6.1 or greater). See http://dev.macperl.org/ for more information.

Under Mac OS, extra non-Carbon-compatible routines are available.

To build these modules on Mac OS X, the Developer Tools are required.

Building these modules has been tested on Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.5, with perl 5.8 and 5.10, with gcc 3.1, 3.3, 4.0, and 4.2. Earlier versions have built under earlier versions of Mac OS X, perl, and gcc, but they have not been recently tested. gcc 3.3 and 4 are the most well-tested.

Mac OS X 10.6 has not yet been tested. Both Intel and PPC have been tested.

This tells you what version of gcc is in use, from the command line:

   % gcc_select
   Current default compiler:
   gcc version 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)

To change it, try one of the following (as root, or with sudo; sudo is used in the examples). "3" will give you 3.1, "3.3" will give you 3.3, "4.0" will give you 4.0.

   % sudo gcc_select 3.3

The Test::More module is required for running tests.

The separate Mac::Errors module is not required, but is highly recommended, for providing more information from Mac system error codes.

Matthias added some extensions to XS for his Toolbox modules; they were never fully embraced by p5p, and as a result, we have a separate xsubpp for these additional XS macros. The Makefile.PLs will choose and use the appropriate xsubpp version for your version of perl.

You might want to run the test suite with make test TEST_VERBOSE=1. It's cool. For extra tests requiring the GUI, set MAC_CARBON_GUI=1 and MAC_CARBON_SOUND=1 in your environment.

Currently, only a subset of the modules are supported. The ported modules are:

	Mac::AppleEvents
	Mac::Components
	Mac::Files
	Mac::Gestalt
	Mac::InternetConfig
	Mac::Memory
	Mac::MoreFiles
	Mac::Notification
	Mac::OSA
	Mac::Processes
	Mac::Resources
	Mac::Sound
	Mac::Speech
	Mac::Types
	MacPerl

Distributed separately on the CPAN and SourceForge.net:

	Mac::Apps::Launch
	Mac::AppleEvents::Simple
	Mac::OSA::Simple
	Mac::Glue

And, coming someday, possibly:

	Mac::SpeechRecognition

There are currently no plans for the other (GUI) modules, including:

	Mac::Controls
	Mac::Dialogs
	Mac::Events
	Mac::Fonts
	Mac::Lists
	Mac::Menus
	Mac::Movies
	Mac::Navigation
	Mac::QDOffScreen
	Mac::QuickDraw
	Mac::QuickTimeVR
	Mac::TextEdit
	Mac::Windows

We could do these eventually, if there is enough interest. They don't port as easily as some of the others, for many reasons, not the least of which is that we need a framework to handle events etc., which for MacPerl is mostly implemented in macish.c / macish.h.

The Mac Toolbox modules were written by Matthias Neeracher <neeracher@mac.com>. They are currently maintained by Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>.

$Id: README,v 1.15 2009/09/27 01:22:36 pudge Exp $