Building Scan Tailor on OSX

[n9yty]

Thanks for the note, I'll check it out an see if there is some interplay going on with the various libraries.

What OS version are you running, 10.5 or 10.6? And if 10.5, intel or powerpc?

[knappen]

10.6.

Btw I only tried those things that made the program crash just once, so it might just be bad luck.

[univurshul]

10.6.

Btw I only tried those things that made the program crash just once, so it might just be bad luck.

It's working great. No crash issues for me (OSX 10.6.4) Scan Tailor is incredible. Sweet baby Jesus this app rocks.

[knappen]

@univur: Have you tried to work from a folder with mixed content (f.x jpg/png)? It worked when I removed the png image, so it's possible that there is a small bug. I also tried this after downloading the updated version.

But yes: The app rocks! So great to be able to use it on Mac too.

[univurshul]

I agree there could be a few bugs. When I batch process, other apps like iTunes and iPhoto randomly launch on their own doing. I haven't fully determined the behavior of the software. And I've only been working with clean folders consisting of jpegs.

[n9yty]

I did test on a mix of .tiff, .jpg and .png and had no issues, but that was on the 10.6 system I used to build it. I just tested on a PPC 10.5 system and it crashed on a tiff and a PNG file. Ok, back to work for me. It is puzzling, but hopefully I will figure the cause out soon. It must have something to do with how the supporting libraries are linked into the bundle. I don't know why JPG works, but life is full of mysteries.

As to other apps launching on their own, I am very puzzled how that could be - I haven't seen anything of that sort and don't know what could possibly cause that. More mysteries.

And, I just compiled all libraries fresh, and made them all "static" so the ScanTailor app didn't have to worry about which version to call, so the application only has itself (with all the other parts bundled in) and the Qt framework, and it still dies.

If anyone wants to send the crash report over, PM me for my email. It doesn't look like this is in the ScanTailor code, or in the stuff I'm compiling, but somehow in the Qt libraries themselves:

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Hung on: QEventLoop::exec(QFlags<QEventLoop::ProcessEventsFlag>)

[univurshul]

As to other apps launching on their own, I am very puzzled how that could be - I haven't seen anything of that sort and don't know what could possibly cause that. More mysteries.

I would say wait to address this mystery-issue until other users report the same problem (it may be a fluke on my end). I've since made a ritual to reset my system, only running Scan Tailor, and it's champ.

[n9yty]

I think it is definitely a Qt library problem. I just downloaded the Qt 4.7BETA2 library set and it does not have the problem.

I have tested tiff/png/jpg on a Leopard 10.5 PPC system and it seems fine now.

Re-uploaded. Same link as before:

http://www.4shared.com/file/brJuZB33/Sc ... -0991.html

MD5 (ScanTailor-0.9.9.1-qt47b2.dmg) = 2a62992fce184996fab5b961b4f7e3ba

(still learning - this time also udpated so the en-bg-ja-ru language translations work)

[And a HUGE HUGE HUGE note of thanks to Tulon!! This app is incredible, isn't it? I think so!]

[Tulon]

I can guess what the problem is.

Qt links to libpng, libjpeg and libtiff. Scan Tailor links to Qt, but also links to libpng, libjpeg and libtiff directly, as it needs more functionality from them than exposed by Qt. Now you can bet Scan Tailor and Qt were compiled against different versions of those libraries. I don't know the peculiarities of the OSX dynamic linking behaviour, but I know that on Linux, you would end up with both Qt and Scan Tailor binding to the same version of those libraries, even though they were compiled against different versions. If those versions happen to be binary incompatible, you get crashes.

The solution is to build a custom version of Qt linking to the same libraries Scan Tailor links to. I do just that for Windows.

[n9yty]

Thanks for the advice, Tulon, but I looked into that and it is not the problem. It was some quirky behavior in that version of Qt I suspect, because moving to the latest beta fixed it. Also, when using the old version, that is why I intentionally statically linked the scantailor binary with versions of libtiff, libjpeg and libpng so that there would be no dynamic loading from scantailor at all, just Qt, and the crash was exactly the same.

But I am glad it is working now. After some more people test it on some more systems and good reports come in, it would be nice if you could host it on the download page along with the regular Windows and source code downloads. I would be more than happy to keep the builds updated.

-Steve