Claws Mail on Mac OS X - developpers page

This page is in development. Last update : 26 june 2007

note

This page contains my (successful) attempts to compile, run and package Claws Mail on Mac OS X
Sorry for you intel guys, I have only an old ibook G4 ppc laptop, which is quite slow (800Mhz). So development is not fast, and I'm unable to provide universal binaries. You can help by buying me an intel based mac! :)
I now have a fast Intel based MacBook Pro, so I'm compiling intel binaries

Compile Claws Mail against Apple X11

These are quick notes, not yet formated
install Apple X11
install Xcode X11 SDK
download/untar gtk-2.6.10, and all its dependancies (not the latest versions)
pkg-config
gettext
export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin"
glib-2.0 >= 2.6.0 atk >= 1.0.1
jpeg (had to run sudo ranlib /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.a ), png
sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig/fontconfig.pc /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig/xft.pc /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/xft-config /usr/local/bin/
download freetype2, install
pango
sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig/xcursor.pc /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
gtk+-2.6.10 --without-libtiff
libetpan-0.49.tar.gz
sudo ln -s /usr/include/openssl /usr/local/include
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/pkgconfig/openssl.pc /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/
claws : ./configure --disable-spamassassin-plugin --disable-dillo-viewer-plugin --disable-trayicon-plugin --disable-bogofilter-plugin
vim gtk/gtkclist.h, add #include <glib/gmem.h>

Compile Claws Mail using Fink

install fink
download and untar Claws Mail sources from there.
the way to go is to run the ./configure script, then using fink, install missing packages needed for the compilation. Some needed software are available only in unstable, so you need to enable unstable packages in the fink pref. This gave me :
- make (binary)
- pkgconfig (binary)
- xorg (binary)
- glib2-dev (compiled from source)
- glib (not the version 2, needed for glib-config)
- gtk2-dev : you'll need version > 2.6,
Claws Mail needs etpan, but there is no fink package. Darwin Ports provides one, but let's compile it from the sources directly. Get the tarball at etpan homepage
compile libetpan with : ./configure --prefix=/sw && make && sudo make install
If you need the SSL support (fot IMAPS for instance), install openssl-dev, via Fink, but before that, make sure you enable "Use unstable cryptography packages" in the Fink preferences
you may want to install/compile other library if you need them in claws. Use ./configure --help to get the list of available options.

The configure script doesn't look for the gtk2, glib and other includes in the right location. one solution is to make symlinks, but wwp proposed adding the include dires in the CFLAGS env var. The configure script doesn't have the options to add includedirs. You might have to add more include dirs depending on your options and lib versions. Check config.log if configure fails Now run the configure :

CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -I/sw/include/glib-2.0 -I/sw/lib/glib-2.0 -I/sw/include/gtk+-2.0 -I/sw/lib/gtk+-2.0" ./configure --prefix=/sw --disable-spamassassin-plugin --disable-dillo-viewer-plugin  --disable-trayicon-plugin --disable-bogofilter-plugin

If the ./configure runs well, it'll output this

claws-mail 2.9.1
JPilot        : no
LDAP          : yes
OpenSSL       : no
iconv         : yes
compface      : no
IPv6          : yes
GNU/aspell    : no
IMAP4         : yes
Crash dialog  : no
Libgnomeprint : no
LibSM         : no
Manual        : yes
Plugins       : 
Maemo  build  : no
Config dir    : .claws-mail
The binary will be installed in /sw/bin

Now let's buid Claws :

make

And install it :

sudo make install

if everything compiled correctly, you should be able to run claws-mail. How? You first need to start X, and from within, start claws-mail. As we installed the fink X server, you have to run

startx

, and within an xterm, run

claws-mail

. Success! Claws Mail will appear. In the next post we'll see how to compile against the Apple X11 server.

Bundle Creation

Having claws mail running from an xterm is great, but it's better if it can be integrated a bit more with the rest. I tried several way to create a proper .app bundle. Here is what worked :

Download and instal Platypus

Use it to create a basic bundle launching a shell script

you should be able to have a basic bundle by addind

exec /usr/local/bin/claws-mail

in the script

But what we want is to embbed claws-mail in the bundle

Get the Gimp.app bundle, and look at how they did

Copy/paste the script and bin/gimp.sh and adapt it to claws mail

Reuse the get_display.sh

add a proper icon, and pray a bit

use the disk utility to build a dmg.