Zelut’s Blog

I’ve had a 13″ Macbook for about your years now. When I learned about MacPorts I was really happy to know I could run newer software, and compile things to my liking. These days I run a development environment on my Macbook, all built using MacPorts.

This post covers how to leverage ccache in compiling your MacPorts. ccache is a compiler cache utility that increases the efficiency of your compiles by reusing cached build data, often improving build times by 5-10 times!

Step 1: Install ccache

sudo port install ccache

Step2: Edit macports.conf”

Open /opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf in your favorite editor. Find the line ‘configureccache’ (near line 65)

configureccache no

and change it to

configureccache yes

You’re done! New compiles will now use ccache.

note: ccache stores it’s cached date in your home directory, ie; /Users/$username/.ccache. It defaults to a maximum cache storage size of 1G. You can find out more about the ccache settings via the ‘ccache -s’ command.

One of the things that has long bugged me about Mac OS X (one of the few things!) is the different way that the Home and End keys function inside a document. I have long been used to Home moving to the beginning of the current line, and End moving to the end of the current line (both on Windows and Linux machines), but on OS X they seem to move to the end of the document and the beginning of the document. After months of working on OS X I have yet to get used to this functionality so today I set out to find a solution. This is what I found.

I quickly found that there are a lot of people with this same gripe. Google is ripe with suggestions. Some of them manual keyboard re-mapping tricks, others suggesting the “Mac way” to achieve the same, and some with third-party software solutions. I went with the latter in this case.

There is a free program available called DoubleCommand, which allows you to remap the way your keyboard works with a number of pre-defined checkboxes. All you need to do in order to gain the “normal” Home and End functionality is to click a box and Activate the changes. Here are five steps you can follow to achieve Home and End normalfication.

1. Download DoubleCommand
2. Install by double-clicking on the .pkg file and following the prompts.
3. Launch DoubleCommand via: Apple > System Preferences > DoubleCommand
4. Select “PC style Home and End keys”
5. Save (System wide or User) and Activate

Next time you’re in a document and need to hit the beginning or end of a line, simply press fn-home/end and you’ve got the functionality the way you might expect it to work. Enjoy!

If you have any other solutions to this problem please share them in the comments. As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat!

I just downloaded and am now using Google Chrome: Developer Preview for Apple OS X.  These builds are also available for Linux, but I have not yet tried them. If you’d like to test them out, you can get the builds here: OS X, Linux 32bit, Linux 64bit. More information available here.

So far I have found only one bug, but I’m sure there are others lurking somewhere. Despite the early release and the issues I think this is a great development! Google Chrome is not limited to just Windows anymore! I really think Google is changing the way browsers are not only designed but also leveraged for rich internet applications.

Here are a few obligatory screenshots before I get back to continued testing:

Installation on Mac OS X.

Running Chrome on OS X

Acid3 Test Results