[Xastir] Mac and GPS

[Jason Winningham]

On Dec 12, 2006, at 1:50 PM, Chip G. wrote:

> I haven't had any success in adding GPSMan to my system.

I had GPSman working on my mac (until I installed a new OS and broke  
_everything_, mostly on purpose).  I don't recall it being a  
significant effort, but I did find two things when I poked around my  
old install. One was a change to the tcl source file:

$ cd /usr/local/gpsman-6.2.1
$ diff gpsman.tcl gpsman.tcl~
214c214
< set SRCDIR /usr/local/gpsman-6.2.1/gmsrc
---
 > set SRCDIR /usr/local/gpsman-6.2.1


The other was a symbolic link in /usr/local/bin:

$ cd /usr/local/bin
$ ls -l gpsman
lrwxr-xr-x   1 jdw  staff  26 Jul 19  2005 gpsman -> ../gpsman-6.2.1/ 
gpsman.tcl

I vaguely recall making this link.  In any event, it didn't seem too  
tough at the time, but it seems there were small discrepancies  
between the instructions and the actual install process that worked.

As for GPSmanshp, I had to twiddle the Makefile for Mac OS X  
compatibility:

$ diff Makefile Makefile~
32c32
< LINKOPT = -L/usr/local/lib -lshp -ltcl$(TCLVERSION)
---
 > LINKOPT = -lshp -ltcl$(TCLVERSION)
35c35
<       $(CC) -dylib -o gpsmanshp.so $(LINKOPT) gpsmanshp.o
---
 >       $(CC) -shared -o gpsmanshp.so $(LINKOPT) gpsmanshp.o


FWIW, I don't use Fink or darwinports; I build from source.


Another GPS related thing that may be of interest to Mac users is a  
version of GPSd bundled up ready to go for Mac OS X:

http://www.grandhighwizard.net/gpsdx.html

Note I have not installed this, much less tested it, but I have ran  
GPSd built from source on the Mac.  This appears to be an easier  
route, especially if you want to run GPSd all the time.

I don't know if it's supported in the Mac version, but GPSd claims  
USB support for some Garmin USB attached GPS units.  It's conceivable  
that it's a linux-only thing, what with the kernel being involved, so  
I don't have extremely high hopes for that feature.

-Jason
kg4wsv