After a long correspondence with a user who saw gretl crashing 
on start-up on OS X Lion, it became apparent that the GTK 
(2.14.3) framework we've been using (built by the R guys) may 
be problematic on Lion. When he tried with a different GTK 
version, gretl ran OK.

The alternative build he tried at my suggestion was another 
from the R guys, namely GTK_2.18.5-X11.pkg. This is more or 
less a drop-in replacement for the version we've been using, 
but it requires a little hackery to get gretl working with it, 
and in my experience on OS X 10.6.8 the font-handling is 
buggy.

So... I've now built a new GTK+.framework myself, on 10.6.8. 
This one should be a direct drop-in replacement for the 
framework we've been using up till now -- on intel macs 
running OS X 10.6 or higher. And the font handling should be 
OK.

I'd be grateful if people could test this build. To give it a 
try, do the following (but please read to the end first!):

1) Download 
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gretl/GTK+.framework.dmg.gz and 
double-click to unzip it. (You can then delete the .gz file.)

2) Move your existing GTK+.framework out of the way: in a 
terminal, do

sudo mv /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework \
  /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework.old

3) Double-click the new dmg file to mount it, then open the 
image in the Finder. Drag the GTK+.framework folder onto the 
Frameworks folder to install.

Now check that gretl runs OK. Although it's not essential, you 
may want to use the current gretl snapshot:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gretl/files/snapshots/gretl-intel.dmg.gz/download

Since the problem that started all this was on Lion, I'm 
particularly interested to see if gretl works there with this
new GTK build, but I'm also interested in results on 10.6.

Note: at present this is a single-arch build, only i386. If 
you're running GTK apps other than gretl, and some of them are 
64-bit, this framework will NOT support them. I can add x86_64 
if need be.

If you try the new framework and then want to restore the old 
one:

# delete the new one
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework
# restore the old
sudo mv /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework.old \
   /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework

Allin Cottrell

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