Freeimage install troubles?

June 28th, 2007

Problem

Getting a “CVS login failed” while attempting to install freeimage (a requirement for ImageScience) on OSX.

Background

ImageScience is a ruby library that generates thumbnails and was created by fellow Seattle.rb hacker Ryan Davis. Following the instructions on the Image_Science homepage, we first need to install freeimage.

While attemping to install freeimage on OSX I kept getting the error “CVS login failed”. And yes, my login to the freeimage repository was successful using:

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@freeimage.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/freeimage login
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install freeimage

I was able to download the repository with the command below, however, due to my lack of unix knowledge or because of freeimage (most likely the former), I could not compile and install freeimage.

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@freeimage.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/freeimage co -P FreeImage

Solution

After crying in the corner for awhile, I read that DarwinPorts is now obsolete and it is now MacPorts. So I headed over to the apple developer website and downloaded the new XCODE package from apple which upgrades your system to MacPorts.

With the new Macports I again ran:

sudo port selfupdate

and it returned:

DarwinPorts base version 1.442 installed
Downloaded MacPorts base version 1.442
The MacPorts installation is not outdated and so was not updated
selfupdate done!

Yay, looks like macports is doin its thang. So I ran the freeimage install via macports:

sudo port install freeimage

Returning:

--->  Fetching freeimage
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for freeimage
--->  Extracting freeimage
--->  Applying patches to freeimage
--->  Configuring freeimage
--->  Building freeimage with target all
--->  Staging freeimage into destroot
--->  Installing freeimage 3.9.2-20070101_0
--->  Activating freeimage 3.9.2-20070101_0
--->  Cleaning freeimage

Sweetness. So there you have it, if you are having problems installing freeimage on your os x box, be sure you have the new “macports” installed instead of the old “darwin ports”. At least that was the case for me…