"Install CLI Tools"

[svec]

I tried "Install CLI Tools" in the latest release (15899): it appeared to do something, but I have no idea what.

1. What did it do?
2. It would be nice if the gui told me what just happened, or at least "here's how to use the command line tool I just installed."

Thanks!

[Aaron]

It adds a bcompare and bcomp command line tools to /usr/local/bin/, which is in your path. So you can now type "bcompare" from a terminal window. This is useful for diff/merge tool definition.

We'll work on improving the menu option to provide more feedback.

[svec]

Okay, then there's a bug:

I don't have a /usr/local/bin/ directory on my Mac (10.8.2), and so I guess the "Install CLI Tools" didn't do anything, failing silently.

[Aaron]

Thanks for that report. We'll look into it.

[mryan]

When I originally attempted to install command line tools, the operation failed ... or at least the BC4 prompt stated that it failed.

It turns out that Macports was set at the owner of /usr/local/bin. I'm not sure why, but after changing it to root, the command line tools installed fine.

[mryan]

I just installed BC4 (16121) on another system, and it also had a bad owner and permissions for "/usr/local/bin". Everything else in "/usr/local/" was set to root with permissions at 755. So I applied those to "bin" and the CLI tools installed fine.

For reference, I've attached images of the error and success panels. The error panel isn't very informative, stating simply that the action failed. Ideally, it would provide specific error information or suggestions, such as "Bad permissions" or "Access denied".

[Aaron]

Hello,

When we encounter insufficient privileges, you should see a prompt for a admin access (username and password). Did this prompt appear? Did you enter in a user that would have privilege to modify this location?

Root should be able to write to any location; was this somehow prevented?

[mryan]

I just did further testing. It's a bit more complicated ...

Regarding the prompt for admin access, it looks like I'm always prompted, even if the "/usr/local/bin" folder has permissions of drwxrwxrwx (777).

If the folder has its owner set to "root", it must have permissions that includes execute access for everyone. So a minimum of "d--------x" (001) works, as does the standard "drwxr-xr-x" (755).

If that last bit isn't enabled (technically the first bit, going right to left), the "Install Command Line Tool" procedure always appears to fail, and the user is prompted with the error that includes the empty string.

The interesting thing is that the "bcomp" and "bcompare" files are written to the folder, even when the error message appears. So if you have the "everyone execute" bit disabled and initiate the install, the error panel will appear. If you then enable the bit so that you can access the folder, you'll see the files were actually written.

The real problem here is that I'm getting an error message under some circumstances when the installation procedure was actually successful.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the report. We'll look into this and see if we can improve it.