instructions for installing on mac

[aedavids]

Hopefully this will make life easier for other. It took me days to figure this out!

The 1.0.2 file naming conventions is miss leading. I ended up installing 1.0.1 after reading https://github.com/nanoporetech/vbz_compression/issues/15

There are two files that have macosx in their name. So you might think you want to install them. First challenge is ? what is a whl file? Turns out this is a package that can be installed using 'pip install'. Oops that does not work. You need to use python 3.9. I created a python 3.9 conda enviroment and used pip. Nothing gets installed! I searched the conda env did not find anything. pip list did not show anything either.

I cloned the git repo and started digging around the source code. It looks like the whl is supposed to be a python wrapper around the c dynamic library. It would be nice if nanoporetech used conda packages. it allows you bundle python and c libraries. Even still which whl should you use? older macs are x86. I think iPhone is arm? maybe new macs are arm?

• pyvbz-1.0.1-cp38-cp38-macosx_10_14_arm64.whl
• pyvbz-1.0.1-cp39-cp39-macosx_10_14_x86_64.whl

based on git issue 15, it turns out what you really want to download is https://github.com/nanoporetech/vbz_compression/releases/download/v1.0.1/ont-vbz-hdf-plugin-1.0.1-Darwin.pkg

based on the name I would never have guess that Darwin is something to do with macOs. Also ".pkg" what is this? mac install apps are "dmg" ?

So first I backed up my mac I have no idea what the pkg might do.

from the terminal I ran the open command. turns out "pkg " is something that can be installed on mac

open ont-vbz-hdf-plugin-1.0.1-Darwin.pkg

but this did not work out of the box. You need to open the setting app,

1. go to security
2. unlock so you can change the security settings
3. got to ?? general tab ???
4. allow ont-vbz-hdf-plugin to install

now like magic hdfview works