Mac OS X specific tools
This page lists various software tools that can be found on the Mac OS X platform (or were hard to find).
These are not necessarily free or Open Source applications, but Mac owners spend money on software sometimes 😉
Application types
Source control GUI's (CVS & SVN)
(CVS: Concurrent Versions System, SVN Subversion - a more civilised replacement for CVS, GUI: Graphical User Interface)
- Eclipse
- http://www.eclipse.org/ is a free Open Source development IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which can be coaxed into being the only tool you need to work on TikiWiki (or any other PHP based application).
http://www.aptana.com/ is a very impressive web app development tool based on Eclipse, but the PHP support at the moment (June 2008) is somewhat lacking. No debugger sadly, but the "Web 2.0" for AJAX and so on support is very impressive.
See this page for how to set up Eclipse on Mac OS.
Frankly now I use Eclipse with it's plugins pretty well exclusively. Howerver, here are some others...
- CVL
- A graphical frontend to CVS - just about! [Most platforms but not listed on Multiplatform tools yet] It aims to support CVS version control system in a graphical interface but can be confusing for the beginner(!)
http://www.sente.ch/software/cvl/
- SCPlugin
- Finder integration for SVN, similar to TortioseSVN on Windows.
http://scplugin.tigris.org/
- Subcommander
- Cross-platform GUI for SVN. Does the bits that SCPlugin sometimes doesn't
http://subcommander.tigris.org/
Text Editors
- Eclipse
- http://www.eclipse.org/ is fine... especially with the Smarty plugin! Alternatively,
- BBEdit
- [Mac OS - $125]
"The best text editor money can buy" I used to think, but it has got quite bloated now, so check out others (i bought it so long ago I just pay for version updates)
The manufacturer's registered slogan for it is "It doesn't suck."
Has a built in FTP/SFTP client built in (so you can open and save remote files as easily as local ones!), colourizes and formats PHP, HTML and CSS (and many, many more) perfectly and does just about everything a text editor possibly could or should do. It will also open HUGE files and not fall over. (not intended as an advert - I just end up using this every time, especially after evaluating others - JB)
http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
- Others
- As I cannot really vouch for other text editors on the Mac here is a (far too) comprehensive list of text and other editors available http://www.pure-mac.com/textword.html.
I hear that TextMate is very good (the Ruby On Rails people seem to like it), and I tried SubEthaEdit for it's collaborative possibilities once (many editors can work on one document at once - scary!)
- VIM
- [Open source, most platforms]
Should be on Multiplatform tools but is one that's available on Mac OS (hey, how about a key there list showing which platforms they're on?)
- GoLive
- Stopped using this as the new (and last) version corrupts TikiWiki site files. Farewell GoLive...
SQL
- Sequel Pro.app Client
- http://www.sequelpro.com/ - donateware
- mac ports mysql Server
- port -v install mysql5 +server
Webmin: for configuring your server
Blog posting
TODO
Image editing and screenshot capturing
- PhotoShop
- [big money] Again, bought it so long ago and it's hard to beat - especially for free! 'Nuff said.
- Graphic Converter
- [$35 - "shareware"] An excellent, cheaper alternative - I often use it because sometimes i can load the app, do the image edit and save it before PhotoShop gets past the credits splash screen! http://www.http://macromates.com/.com/
- Gimp
- See Multiplatform tools and/or http://www.gimp.org/
- Screenshots?
- Press CMD+SHIFT+3 for whole screen, or CMD+SHIFT+4 for an area.
Screencasting or Desktop Session recording
TODO
File Transfer (ftp, sftp)
- Transmit
- Very "Mac-like" FTP client - money again
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
- FireFTP
- Firefox add-on - should be on Multiplatform tools - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684
File compression/decompression
Mostly I just use the built in system BOMArchiveHelper tool to decompress
- CleanArchiver
- Compresses most archive formats and doesn't include all the embarrassing Mac hidden files (optionally).
http://www.sopht.jp/cleanarchiver/
- Zipeg
- Archive browser with a nice icon of a sheep.
http://www.zipeg.com/
On-line communication (IRC)
- Colloquy
- Very cool looking IRC client for Mac OS Open Source
I don't know much about it (yet) but looks far better than any of the others available http://colloquy.info/
Now available on iPhone, apparently!