Pike 8.0 packages for macOS, RHEL, Solaris and others

Hi all,

A few updates for users of Pike on macOS (and a few other platforms as 
well).

* Dependency-free binary installers for macOS.

First, beginning with 8.0.438, I am building dependency-free binary 
packages for macOS 10.12 and macOS (is the name change retroactive??) 
10.9. They're available from the Pike website[1]. Note that there's a 
download for Darwin that can be used on macOS, but it has shared library 
dependencies, and thus is harder to get working on most systems.

The 10.9 package works on 10.10 through 10.11 and should work on 10.12 
in a pinch if you don't want to juggle 2 different packages. These are 
linked against the 10.x SDK and static libraries, and therefore are 
dependency free. I've included support for MySQL, PCRE and a few other 
common dependencies (there is a .info file that describes the features 
enabled). They install just as other Pike binary distributions do: 
download and then execute the downloaded file from a command line.

Once caveat: because the build environment configuration is installed 
with these packages, you may find it more troublesome to compile add-on 
modules later because your system's configuration may be different than 
the ones I build on (it doesn't have /usr/local, for example). If you 
want or need to compile modules later on, you can either a) update the 
configuration manually or b) see my next announcement.

* Pike 8.0 is now in Homebrew

For those using Homebrew[2], I've finally got a working formula for Pike 
8.0 added. While 7.8 has been available for some time, there were build 
problems that prevented the Homebrew team from accepting an update to 
8.0. That's all been fixed and 8.0.438 should be available both as 
binary "bottles" and as a locally compiled install. If you've got 
homebrew installed, getting pike should be as simple as:

brew update
brew install pike

There's a linux fork of homebrew and I expect that it will include pike 
shortly as well. If anyone tries this formula on either platform, please 
let me know if you have any problems or suggestions.

* Pike on pkgsrc, rpms and macports

I'm working on getting pike set up in pkgsrc[3], a package repository 
for NetBSD, Solaris, OSX and others. It's still a work in progress but I 
expect to have something submitted in the next week. Joyent builds 
binary distributions[4] for OSX and Solaris quarterly, so hopefully by 
the end of summer Pike will be available on NetBSD and Solaris without 
compiling. If anyone is familiar with pkgsrc or wants to test the 
packages, please let me know and I'll keep them in the loop.

I also have RPMs for Pike on RHEL 6/7 if anyone's interested. I've not 
really decided whether to go through the trouble of trying to get pike 
included or not; if anyone wants to adopt this little project, I can 
provide specs, etc that should build working packages as a basis for 
making a submission.

Finally, pike 7.6 is included in macports[5] but has no maintainer, and 
also may have been an unofficial fink package. My sense is that both 
fink and macports are losing market share to homebrew, but I'd be 
willing to try to put together a revived packaging effort for either 
system if someone thought it would be worthwhile and/or willing to 
assist.

It's my sense that now that the kinks are worked out, updates for future 
8.0 releases should be simple to prepare, until whatever 8.1 becomes is 
released and breaks everything again, so if anyone wants to get involved 
with packaging in an easy way, this could be your chance. ;)

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!

Bill

[1] http://pike.lysator.liu.se/download/pub/pike/latest-stable/, look 
for the packages with "MacOS" in the filename.
[2] http://brew.sh
[3] http://pkgsrc.org
[4] http://pkgsrc.joyent.org
[5] https://trac.macports.org/ticket/47918