APT/RPM on MacOS X

Preparation

In what follows, I assume that you have already installed the latest X window system (XQuartz-2.7.11 on my Mac box) and developer tools (Xcode-9.3). If you haven't, install them before you proceed. After installing Xcode, you may need to install command line tools. For this, type the following command in a terminal window:

$ xcode-select --install

and follow the instruction in a pop-up window. Notice also that I am going to use bash unless otherwise stated.

First you need to install the minimal set of the APT/RPM system using the MacOS X Workshop installer for 10.13. Besides acting as a can opener the installer will replace some of your dot-files in your home directory with your original files backed up appending the post fix, ".rpmorig", if any. Modify, for instance, "~/.bashmyrc" instead of "~/.bashrc" as needed to reflect your preferred settings in your original "~/.bashrc".

First add Sierra to the list of MacOSX-WS repositories so as to allow 10.12 packages in case the package you want is unavailable in the High Sierra repository:

$ sudo vi /opt/osxws/etc/apt/sources.list.d/main.list ... rpm http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS HighSierra/$(ARCH) main updates rpm http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS HighSierra/noarch main updates rpm-src http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS HighSierra/$(ARCH) main updates rpm http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS Sierra/$(ARCH) main updates rpm http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS Sierra/noarch main updates rpm-src http://liberty.cc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/OSXWS Sierra/$(ARCH) main updates

Then type in the following from a terminal window to install the base APT/RPM system:

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install OSX-base $ sudo apt-get clean

You then need to tell the location of HEPonX packages to the APT/RPM system. Make sure your /opt/osxws/etc/apt/sources.list.d/heponx.list contains the following lines:

$ sudo vi /opt/osxws/etc/apt/sources.list.d/heponx.list ...... rpm http://www-jlc.kek.jp/~fujiik/macosx/10.13.X HEPonX/$(ARCH) main rpm http://www-jlc.kek.jp/~fujiik/macosx/10.13.X HEPonX/noarch main rpm-src http://www-jlc.kek.jp/~fujiik/macosx/10.13.X HEPonX/$(ARCH) main ......

Basic Usage of APT

The apt figures out inter-dependencies of various packages and automatically installs required packages as well as the target package you chose to install. The HEP on X's apt is so setup that it will download and install these packages from the HEP on X site, this web site. For this to work properly, first you have to synchronize your apt database with the one at this site as follows.

$ sudo apt-get update

Then you can install any package, say foo, by typing in

$ sudo apt-get install foo

If foo depends on some other packages, the apt will ask you whether you want to go ahead and install all of the necessary packages to satisfy dependencies. When you have already installed foo, it will do nothing. If a newer version is available, it will update foo.

To upgrade all the packages already installed, do

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

instead.

After you install all of the packages you wanted to install, do

$ sudo apt-get clean

so as to clean up the RPM packages downloaded into /opt/osxws/var/cache/apt/archives/.

If you want to uninstall foo, type in

$ sudo apt-get remove foo

If you are looking for a package, say bar, try

$ apt-cache search bar

to get a list of packages that are relevant.

Basic Usage of RPM

Sometimes you may want to treat RPMs directly for query purpose. In such a case, the following may come into handy.

$ rpm -qa                       # to see list of all that installed
$ rpm -qi foo                  # to get information on an installed package "foo"
$ rpm -ql foo                  # to see list of files belonging to "foo"
$ rpm -qpi bar-1.0-1a.x86_64.rpm   # to get information on a pre-installed rpm package
$ rpm -qpl bar-1.0-1a.x86_64.rpm   # to see list of files belonging to "bar-1.0-1a"
$ rpm -qf <filename>           # to check what RPM package owns the file

If you have an RPM package, you can also directly install it with the rpm command as follows.

$ sudo rpm -ivh bar-1.0-1a.x86_64.rpm                # to install "bar-1.0-1a"
$ sudo rpm -Uvh foo-1.0-2a.x86_64.rpm                # to update "foo"
$ sudo rpm -Uvh --oldpackage foo-1.0-1a.x86_64.rpm   # to revert this
$ sudo rpm -e   foo                               # to eliminate "foo"

Acknowledgement

In preparing the APT tree for HEP on X, I depended so much on the information available from Dr. Taizo Kobayashi's wonderful site, MacOS X WorkShop (in Japanese), where he started the first apt-rpm-based distribution for MacOS X, aiming mainly at Japanese research workers who need Japanized versions of unix tools such as TeX, ghostscript, etc. on MacOS X. I would like to express my sincere thanks to him for bringing his site to my attention and providing me with a lot of useful information.

Back to Keisuke Fujii's HEP on X Page

keisuke.fujii@kek.jp Apr. 8, 2018