After seeing the successful deployment
of
Noblemaster's libgdx-based games to the iTunes store, I figured it
would be fun to port the libgdx games that I've created to iOS and
release them to the iTunes store as well. So, today I went out to the local Best Buy and picked up a Macbook Pro 15” MD103LL/A. It was on sale for about $120 less than the retail price that was listed. I could have went for the more expensive model that included more system memory, but after doing some reading, saw that adding memory is pretty simple and cost effective so I'll probably go that route.
I brought the machine home and the first order of business was to get it running on my network. Fail.
First and foremost – for whatever
reason, the MacBook Pro would knock my Netgear WND3300 Wireless
router out of commission. The net result (heh!) was that not only could the
Apple machine NOT get on the Internet, but it also fouled up the rest
of my network. Other machines that were working just fine would no
longer be able to access the Internet. This is not the first time
I've seen this behavior.
My brother-in-law has had a MacBook Pro
for a while now. Every time he has brought his machine over, he has
caused the same issues... after setting up the wireless
configuration, boom – my network goes down. The only way to
correct this in the past has been to reset the router.
This time I was determined to figure
out a workaround if not an out and out fix. Using Google was worthless. None of the tips I saw worked out. After poking around with “ifconfig” and messing around with general settings, I noticed
that I could get things to work once again if I manually defined the
DNS values. My standard test to verify is simply “ping
www.google.com” from a terminal window.
Now, normally, the DHCP server
capabilities of the router kick in and assign the router as the DNS
server for the DHCP client. This has worked flawlessly with Windows
machine. For some odd reason, this causes issues using an Apple
machine. I logged into the WND3300 and took a look at its DNS
capabilities. It's cable modem side acts a DHCP client itself, which
gets its configuration from the cable configurations that are assigned by the cable company. I looked at
the assigned DNS server values. They looked correct. Based on a
hunch, I modified the “Domain Name Server (DNS) Address” setting
on the Basic Settings page from “Get Automatically From ISP” to
“Use These DNS Servers” and specified what the cable modem always
gives me. After doing that, the MacBook Pro no longer has any issues
accessing the Internet and the other machines on the network
similarly work fine. Whew! That blew about an hour or so of time.
Next on the list was to download Xcode.
Xcode is the IDE used for developing iOS applications. I've used it
a little bit in the past. I had to log into the Apple App Store and
download it. Annoyingly, I also had to update my credit card info on
file with Apple. As great as everyone claims Apple is, I find this
to grate on my nerves... Especially given that Xcode is available as
a free download. I guess I should also mention, I already had an
Apple ID that I created back when I had an iPod Touch. So, getting that stuff up and running was annoying but not world-ending.
With Xcode downloaded, I needed to
install Eclipse. Wow. Installing Eclipse is easy. The problem
comes in that there are about 10 different flavors of Eclipse.
Historically, I've always gone for Eclipse Classic. However, this
only provides a bare minimum. After doing some looking around, I
discovered that there is a version of Eclipse for Mobile Developers.
Sweet! It includes Java and
C development tools. The libgdx library backend includes certain
things written in C for performance reasons (the Box2D Physics
Engine, for example.) I've had to make my own tweaks to that in the
past so its been cool to have C tools available. At any rate, I
installed that.
Then,
I tried to run Eclipse. Blah. You need the Java JDK before it will
work. On a Windows machine, you get that from Sun. Not so on an
Apple machine. At a terminal prompt, I entered “javac -version”
and it prompted me for an install. I wanted to specify an exact
version of the JDK but I didn't see an option. I've heard of
problems with JDK 7 and wanted to stick with JDK 6. I bit the bullet
and just accepted whatever version the default installer selected.
Turns out that I lucked out and am now running 1.6.0_37. Woot!
Next up I wanted
to get my Mercurial repos running. On Windows, I use TortoiseHg
which has really nice integration with Windows Explorer. On the Mac,
there were a few options and I decided to give Atlassian's SourceTree
a shot. I've got my repos hosted on Bitbucket so it seemed to make
sense since BB is operated by Atlassian. (Note: There has been an update on this -- I'm now using TortoiseHg on my Macbook Pro.)
In order to access
my BB repos, I apparently need to get the ssh keys configured. I
tried to follow
Atlassian's directions where they imply that you'll
be prompted to enter your ssh key info when you try to clone a
project. This will supposedly add your key to your system's
keychain. That's not the case. Trying to clone a repo resulted in
an invalid URL problem and I couldn't get any further than that.
So, I copied my
private BB ssh key over to the MacBook. In order to access my repos,
I need to have my ssh key in the Mac's key ring. This is done via
“ssh-add -K /path/to/key/here”. So I did this, got prompted for
the passphrase and then.. it failed. Mwah? I generated the key
using Puttygen and use it on nearly a daily basis, so I'm 100% the
passphrase was being entered in correctly. Turns out that you need
to use PuttyGen to export the key in an openSSH format. After doing
that, I could add the key successfully.
Next up was to get
my graphical development environment going. This meant getting
Inkscape and GIMP up and running. Since I'm running OS X 10.8
(Mountain Lion), this is not as straightforward as simply installing
the related dmgs. No. Trying to run Inkscape gives you a prompt
saying “Where is X11?” Turns out that you need to first install
Xquartz, which is the Open Source X11 that Apple no longer includes on its machines.
Yippee.
After downloading
that and rebooting, and trying to Inksape again, I was still prompted
for “Where is X11”. Mwah? You need to go to your Utilities
folder and start Xquartz and THEN start Inkscape. Geez. So much for
the “ease” of using Apple products. On the other hand, the GIMP
version was already setup with Mountain Lion compatibility so I
didn't need to do much there other than copying the GIMP application
to my Applications folder. Sweet.
