FYI Mac Users: Manual Installation of Ghostscript
Posted: 2008-09-02T17:49:59-07:00
I have been struggling with installing Ghostscript on my Mac OSX 10.4.11 Tiger for some time now. The Ghostscript documentation is lacking and so is my knowledge of Unix. I finally got it working and am just posting this note for others. (P.S. Thanks to Anthony for his help).
There are two issues:
1) Installing the Ghostscript.framework
2) Installing gsc
I found the following documentation in the Ghostscript docs regarding issue #1:
"There is also a support for building Ghostscript as a framework. This is a special encapsulated shared library format specific to MacOS X. To build the framework, copy macosx.mak to the top-level directory, rename it to makefile and issue 'make framework' from Terminal.app. This will result in a Ghostscript.framework in the sobin directory. It must be manually copied to /Library/Frameworks/ before applications can use it. You may need to create the Frameworks/ directory on some systems."
But there was no information about issue #2. Although gsc does get created in the sobin directory along with the framework, the documentation says nothing about where to put it or that it is needed at all. The IM delegates.xml file normally looks for gs which is installed, but for Macs it wants gsc. So I simply copied gsc from the sobin directory to the same location on my computer as gs, namely, /usr/local/bin
So my Ghostscript installation process boils down to the following (although I may be doing some extra things that are not needed)
• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install
• copy macosx.mak from src to top level of Ghostscript source directory
• rename it to Makefile
• make framework
• copy Ghostscript.framework from sobin directory of Ghostcript source to /Library/Frameworks
• also copy gsc from sobin directory and put in /usr/local/bin (same place as gs is located)
• reboot
• install IM
There are two issues:
1) Installing the Ghostscript.framework
2) Installing gsc
I found the following documentation in the Ghostscript docs regarding issue #1:
"There is also a support for building Ghostscript as a framework. This is a special encapsulated shared library format specific to MacOS X. To build the framework, copy macosx.mak to the top-level directory, rename it to makefile and issue 'make framework' from Terminal.app. This will result in a Ghostscript.framework in the sobin directory. It must be manually copied to /Library/Frameworks/ before applications can use it. You may need to create the Frameworks/ directory on some systems."
But there was no information about issue #2. Although gsc does get created in the sobin directory along with the framework, the documentation says nothing about where to put it or that it is needed at all. The IM delegates.xml file normally looks for gs which is installed, but for Macs it wants gsc. So I simply copied gsc from the sobin directory to the same location on my computer as gs, namely, /usr/local/bin
So my Ghostscript installation process boils down to the following (although I may be doing some extra things that are not needed)
• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install
• copy macosx.mak from src to top level of Ghostscript source directory
• rename it to Makefile
• make framework
• copy Ghostscript.framework from sobin directory of Ghostcript source to /Library/Frameworks
• also copy gsc from sobin directory and put in /usr/local/bin (same place as gs is located)
• reboot
• install IM