1

Probably I'm not doing this right, but I'm trying to get the gui-version of unison to run on my mac (Big Sur 11.4), but when I download binary release (https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison/releases) and run unison-gtk2, it says Warning: DISPLAY not set or empty; starting the Text UI in the output. I also tried to build from source with make UISTYLE=macnew but it didn't build the gui app. The releases I found where all for Catalina, which could be the issue. Which version should I try to install, and how, if I want the GUI version? (I was able to update the text-version of unison using homebrew, but I think I can't get the gui with brew, or can I?)

mchlmchl
  • 23
  • 2
  • Hi, I'm not familiar with Mac at all, but the message you are getting suggests that the GUI version did start, but it just couldn't connect to the (graphical) display (a.k.a. X server). I would focus my troubleshooting efforts on that `DISPLAY not set or empty` message. HTH! – Edward Jul 26 '21 at 06:21
  • That sounds right, but do I need to specify a display by providing an additional argument? Or is this likely to be a compatibility issue with the operating system? – mchlmchl Jul 26 '21 at 12:46
  • Unfortunately I've got no clue how to get this working on Mac (anyone with experience chime in?). On Linux, the `DISPLAY` environment variable would likely be set already, unless you're doing something weird (like running a shell that doesn't run in a graphical window manager). Could you try and run `unison` from within a shell? Possibly printing out the value of that environment variable `DISPLAY` perhaps? – Edward Jul 27 '21 at 13:14
  • I think I was doing something weird then, I was just tryting to run it in Terminal, and `echo $DISPLAY` returns no value, so presumably I'd need a different shell that has a graphical window manager. What I would really like to do though is to compile the unison app, which is how I had been running unison before. – mchlmchl Jul 27 '21 at 17:29
  • When I download the precompiled app (e.g. at https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison/releases/download/v2.51.4/Unison-v2.51.4.ocaml-4.08.1.macos-10.15.app.tar.gz) and run it I get an error though because it says the app is damaged. (again, this may be an OS compatibility issue). So ideally what I'd need is intructions how to build the app in a way that is OS Big Sur compatible. It's very possible though that I'm doing something wrong – mchlmchl Jul 27 '21 at 17:29
  • I'm afraid I can't help you much, sorry ... Would perhaps development versions of certain libraries you might need be missing? (Does Mac even work that way?) – Edward Jul 28 '21 at 19:41

1 Answers1

2

Replying to @mchlmchl

Fix the "app is damaged" error by putting it in the Applications folder and running the following command:

xattr -cr /Applications/Unison.app

Source: https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison/wiki/CI-Binary-instructions

Download the precompiled app v2.51.4

This works on my MacBook Pro 16inch running macOS Big Sur 11.6.

Kris Kratz
  • 61
  • 1
  • 4