How to install .tar/tar.gz files onto Mac Lion?

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Level 1

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How to install .tar/tar.gz files onto Mac Lion?

For an Astronomy assignment I need to download the SAOImage DS9 software onto my Macbook. I've downloaded the appropriate program from the website's download page (MacOSX 10.7 (Lion), but the file downloads as a .TAR file. When I extract the file, a .zip file and a Unix Executable File opens in a new folder, and when I unzip the .zip file another folder opens that contains a bunch of different directories that I have no idea what they're for. Nowhere is the SAOImage application. This is what the directories look like:

I've even googled how to install the DS9 program onto Mac, but the information that comes up has nothing about the .TAR/.TAR.GZ extensions, neither do they say anything about the directories. They assume that once you download the program, then the program app should be inside the download (but as you can see, it's not).

I've already downloaded the latest version of X11 and have even restarted by Macbook, but the problem still persists. Please help asap--I have a 2-week time limit and I really need the program.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Dec 24, 2012 2:50 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,308 points

Dec 24, 2012 4:18 PM in response to EFamily

It should just double click.

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Answer 2

EFamily Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 24, 2012 4:42 PM in response to a brody

I do double click, but then it extracts another .zip file (like the first photo), and when I double-click that .zip file another folder opens (the circled one in red), and that file contains a bunch of other files within it...

The application is nowhere to be found.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

85,308 points

Dec 25, 2012 9:54 AM in response to EFamily

Use http://www.stuffit.com Stuffit Expander for any archived files left over. .tar is the old tape archive format for Unix machines, where gzip is much like Winzip, except it is more popular amongst Unix platforms. You could write the author of the application and tell them of the missing files.

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Answer 4

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,502 points

Dec 25, 2012 1:16 PM in response to EFamily

The application is nowhere to be found.

The item with the gray icon that says exec is the application. When you first open the downloaded .gz file, you get this:

ds9

ds9.zip

Double clicking the .zip file gets you the rest of the items in a folder named zvfsmntpt, as you know. Within that is a folder named doc, which contains all of the relevant documentation. For the basic docs for using the app, open the folder user and double click index.html to load it in your browser. Besides the six headings, there's a link at the end of the first sentence for Reference Manual. Under that, among quite a few others, is a heading for Command Line Options, which appears to be all the commands you need to run this program in OS X.

To say the least, this is far from an easy program to use on the Mac. It appears everything has to be run from a command line. They couldn't have made it much more difficult to use. Maybe not though if X11 is installed. Then I would suppose you get screens similar to the Windows examples shown in some of the documentation.

If you go back to the doc folder, there's install.html you can double click. The entire OS X instruction for installing this app is:

Download DS9 for MacOSX. This is an universal application that contains binaries for both PPC and Intel Macs. Drag to your Applications folder.

You can actually run it from anywhere. Your desktop, wherever. It doesn't really matter. If I try to run the app, Terminal launches and runs the app, but it errors out with this message:

Application initialization failed: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable

Unable to initialize window system.

I'm guessing this means I need X11 installed, but I can't be sure because nowhere does it say that. But "window system" generally means X11.

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