OSX compatability

[matthewkirby]

I was unable to get this to compile out of the box on OSX with coreutils (which includes gnu make) installed. This means that I should install the software by calling

./configure
gmake
gmake install

But this also requires that the Makefile calls ginstall. ./configure did actually find the correct thing, checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/local/bin/ginstall -c but it didn't utilize this information at all. I have no experience writing makefiles and I didn't want to work through the 3000 line configure file. But this can be resolved simply by having ./configure set the result (/usr/local/bin/ginstall -c) to a variable that is then inserted into the makefile a la

installer   = @installer@

install     :
     $(installer) -p -D --target-directory=$(bindir) $(PROGNAME)

[slingshotocelot]

I ran into compilation issues on macOS as well. I wasn't able to get the default macOS make to work, as it gave the error install: illegal option -- D (and somewhat bafflingly, install: illegal option -- - when I changed the -D in the makefile to lowercase). gmake via homebrew gave the same error. However, it is compatible with gmake if you change the makefile to point to ginstall instead of macOS default install.

So, for macOS compatibility:

1. Install coreutils and make via homebrew
2. Run ./configure as usual
3. Open the makefile and change the line install -p -D --target-directory=$(bindir) $(PROGNAME) to ginstall -p -D --target-directory=$(bindir) $(PROGNAME)
4. Run gmake install

I don't know enough about the differences between macOS and Linux to figure out how to have the makefile work for both OSes, but hopefully this helps.