linuxmacoscrf

How to get CRFSuite to work on Mac OS X?


I am trying to get CRFSuite to work on Mac OS X. The author only has binaries for Windows and Linux, but does provide the source package. I am guessing I need to somehow compile the source into a Mac OS X executable? This I have no idea how to do. I did some research on this, but nothing actually works. I also asked a PhD student at the university specifically this problem--he told me it would be very difficult.

I have been able to get CRFSuite to work by using WineSkin, but that's a workaround and not a real solution.

Ideally when I open the Terminal I should be able to invoke CRFSuite by just typing "crfsuite" and not jumping through hoops to pipe commands to a WineSkin Windows Terminal.


Solution

  • It's easy with homebrew.

    First go to homebrew website - here and install it. It is very simple.

    Then do the following in Terminal:

    brew tap brewsci/science
    brew install crfsuite
    

    If anything goes wrong, use

    brew doctor
    

    Once you are up and running, I find it a good idea to occasionally do the following to upgrade brew itself and the installed packages:

    brew update
    brew upgrade
    

    There are lots of gret, up-to-date packages that are so easy to install using homebrew, I use the following:

    ant
    basex
    cmake
    coreutils
    exiftool
    exiv2
    faac
    ffmpeg
    fontconfig
    freetype
    gawk
    gd
    gettext
    ghostscript
    gnu-sed
    gnuplot
    ilmbase
    imagemagick
    jasper
    jbig2dec
    jhead
    jp2a
    jpeg
    lame
    leptonica
    libpng
    libtiff
    libtool
    lighttpd
    little-cms2
    lua
    lynx
    mad
    netpbm
    opencv
    openexr
    openssl
    p7zip
    parallel
    pcre
    perlmagick
    pipebench
    pipemeter
    pkg-config
    platypus
    proftpd
    pv
    qt
    readline
    redis
    sleuthkit
    sox
    sqlite
    sqlitebrowser
    tag
    tesseract
    tree
    wget
    x264
    xvid
    xz
    

    If you want to look for additional packages, just use:

    brew search <search string>