[Bf-docboard] Installing help on OS X

[Dirk van Oosterbosch, IR labs]

Hi,

I'm new to Blender, so I won't talk about the totally confusing UI to  
me as a Mac OS X user or the poor performance on my little powerBook ;-)

This post is about instructions how to install Blender on OS X.

Specifically, since there is no installer for OS X, one would expect  
some help in setting it up.

First, applications on OS X normally live in /Applications, so you  
should maybe explain users that they should drag the blender.app and/ 
or the blenderplayer.app into /Applications or drag the whole  
unzipped blender folder in there.

Second, more important –and the instigation to write this post–:  
installing of the command line tool / installation of blender as a  
command line tool.
For most mac users it is not common to peek into the .app bundle, to  
run stuff there. It is even less common that the same binary which  
functions as the full blown app, is the same binary to use as a  
command line.
Therefore IMHO, in the installation documentation for OS X it should  
mention the working of this binary living in
/Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/. Better even, while  
there is no installer, the documentation should explain how to add or  
link this this binary to somewhere on your $PATH in order to be able  
to run it from the command line.

I typed something like:
% ln -s /Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender /usr/ 
local/bin
in the Terminal to accomplish this, but of course there are other  
methods too.


Concluding: I think there should at least be a mention of the blender  
command line tool for Mac OS X users and possibly a simple way to  
install it into your $PATH.


Best,
dirk





-----------------------------
Dirk van Oosterbosch
de Wittenstraat 225
1052 AT Amsterdam
the Netherlands

http://labs.ixopusada.com
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