Compiling SWFTools on Mac OS X Leopard

swftoolsIt took some Google search coupons, but this guide to installing SWFTools (*) on OS X is perfect. Here are some (minor) steps in the process I had to do/find out.

Mainly a note to myself, yet it might help you too:

  • XCode can be found on your OS X installation disc. If you don’t have your installation disc with you, you can download it.
  • When not having configured fink to use the unstable tree you won’t be able to install SWFTools (step 9 will fail stating that the package doesn’t exist). To fix this, run /sw/bin/fink configure and re-answer the config questions again (this time answer ‘m correctly) and then run /sw/bin fink selfupdate again.
  • For me, the installation of SWFTools failed at installing the required gtk+2 package. Somewhere in between the thousands of lines of output that appeared in the terminal window, I found out an error stating that I needed to install X11 2.3.0. After having done so (beware: you need to log out and log on again), just re-rerun /sw/bin/fink install swftools and then it should complete.
  • Installing the 106 required additional packages (which goes automagically) actually takes quite a while: expect at least 1 hour of staring at output rolling in the terminal window. Go grab lunch, or do another task.

That’s it!

(*) SWFTools is a darn handy collection of utilities for working with Adobe Flash files (SWF files). The tool collection includes programs for reading SWF files, combining them, converting them, and — what I am using them for — extracting objects from them.

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Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

Unless noted otherwise, the contents of this post are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License and code samples are licensed under the MIT License

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1 Comment

  1. Thanks for this useful article – got me started. Fink now only contains an old version (0.8.1-2) – macports has the more recent version (0.9+).

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