Mac OS install observation

[DWL]

This is an observation about the pre-compiled binaries for Mac OS.

If the (unpacked) sage disk image directory is saved in a folder that has a space character in its name, for example:

$HOME/Applications/my folder

Then sage will not load properly when the "sage" executable is clicked. The terminal session begins, but the application doesn't load successfully.

Changing the parent directory name to "my_folder" resolved this issue.

While using space characters in directory names probably isn't all that common in UNIX or Linux installations, it is more common in Mac OS installations. Perhaps the installation instructions could be updated to mention this issue?

Thanks,

dan

[kcrisman]

Dear Dan,

Thanks for the report. We fixed a similar issue quite some time ago -
see http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/5261 . However, this
addressed a space in the app name, not the folder. I don't remember
hearing this before, though. Maybe there is something weird about
the binary... is this a recent version?

1. Can someone else duplicate this (my current connection is not ideal
for downloading large files like this, unfortunately, so I can't test
it in the next few days)?

2. As a test, can you download the source of Sage, build it, and
report if the same thing happens on your computer?

Thanks,
- kcrisman

[Mitesh Patel]

> On Jul 29, 12:55 pm, DWL <ld...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> This is an observation about the pre-compiled binaries for Mac OS.
>>
>> If the (unpacked) sage disk image directory is saved in a folder that has a
>> space character in its name, for example:
>>
>> $HOME/Applications/my folder
>>
>> Then sage will not load properly when the "sage" executable is clicked. The
>> terminal session begins, but the application doesn't load successfully.
>>
>> Changing the parent directory name to "my_folder" resolved this issue.
>>
>> While using space characters in directory names probably isn't all that common
>> in UNIX or Linux installations, it is more common in Mac OS installations.
>> Perhaps the installation instructions could be updated to mention this issue?

With a very recent Sage built from source on sage.math, I see what I
think is the same problem. I've opened a ticket:

http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/9644

[DWL]

It occurs for me with the most recent version of the disk image on the download page.

The workaround of not using a folder with a space in the name is fine for my purposes.

dan

---

From: kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com>
To: sage-support <sage-s...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, July 29, 2010 5:11:36 PM
Subject: [sage-support] Re: Mac OS install observation

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[Dr. David Kirkby]

On 07/30/10 02:59 AM, DWL wrote:
> It occurs for me with the most recent version of the disk image on the download
> page.
>
> The workaround of not using a folder with a space in the name is fine for my
> purposes.
>
>
> dan

IMHO, we should try to fix the packages which don't accept spaces.

Currently there's code in Sage which removes the spaces. If there was an
environment variable like "SAGE_LEAVE_SPACES" then we could gradually fix the
packages which break with spaces. A space is a perfectly legal character in a
path, so we really should be solving the problems, not having a hack like this.

dave