Installing GeneWeb under macOS

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Traces in terminal window at GeneWeb start.

The simplest install is as follows (process verified on macOS Yosemite; Big Sur):

  • Download the appropriate version. https://github.com/geneweb/geneweb/releases.
  • Double-clicking on the downloaded .tgz file creates a subfolder.
  • Rename this folder to your liking, for instance MyGeneWeb
  • Move this folder where you prefer.
  • Start GeneWeb by double-clicking the geneweb.command in this folder (not gwd or gwsetup). This should open a terminal window and browser window with the start page of GeneWeb.
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Starting page for GeneWeb.
Note that on recent macOS versions, executable code must be signed for execution to proceed. For unsigned executables (which is currently the case for GeneWeb) as well as shell scripts, the solution varies with the macOS version:
  • on older versions (Yosemite, Big Sur) click-right and select the "open" option. After one such process, double-clicking will be accepted. Note that this process must be executed on the various binaries in gw (gw/gwd and gw/gwsetup at least).
  • on more recent versions (Monterey, ..., Tahoe) one must open the "Privacy and security" section of System settings. In this section one must allow execution of the designated program.
Once this process has been done, further opening of the program will be allowed.

Running the program may require the system password.

  • If the terminal windows just opened indicated "failure", this may be due to some idiosyncrasies of your environment.
Try the following:
  • Open the file geneweb.command in a text editor
  • Replace the line
kill_process '/xxx'
by
killall xxx
and save the result back to disk.
  • Start GeneWeb by double-clicking the new geneweb.command.

When GeneWeb is running on a machine, it behave like a web server and will accept URLs following a precise syntax. You can lauch GeneWeb with a lot of parameters, for example as a Unix daemon or behind a real HTTP server with CGI.

With this direct and simple installation approach, the bases created and managed by GeneWeb are located in MyGeneWeb/bases. To setup GeneWeb in a more elaborate configuration, where code and bases are separated in two distinct folders, see the bases page. You may alse modify the gw/gwd.arg parameter file by replacing the ./bases value by path_to_your_bases.

Multiple versions install

Installing multiple versions of GeneWeb is possible. The following section describes one approach. One of its benefits is to make more explicit several aspects of the folder structure expected by GeneWeb.

The first step is to organise a folder structure which will contain the various elements. Although style and taste may vary, here is a proposal for such a structure which is rather general, identifies the various components associated with GeneWeb and is amenable to changes.

All the genealogy files are located in a folder called Genealogy sitting in “Home”, and containing two sub-folders "GeneWeb" (sources and binaries), “GeneWeb-Bases” (bases and other base specific data. a specific base may be called base in the following discussions and examples) and two command files launching each one particular version of gwd and gwsetup (see below): 

iMac-H:Genealogy Henri$ cd ~/Genealogy/
iMac-H:Genealogy Henri$ pwd
/Users/Henri/Genealogy
iMac-H:Genealogy Henri$ ls -al
total 24
drwxr-xr-x   5 Henri  staff    170 14 oct 12:57 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 81 Henri  staff   2754 14 oct 13:28 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 Henri  staff  10244 14 oct 13:28 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x   8 Henri  staff    272 14 oct 12:59 GeneWeb
drwxr-xr-x  13 Henri  staff    442 14 oct 13:04 GeneWeb-Bases
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 Henri  staff   3036  8 sep 12:14 Gw-Mac-6.08.command
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 Henri  staff   3160 20 sep 05:55 Gw-Mac-7.00.command
iMac-H:Genealogy Henri$
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Folder structure under Mac OS X for GeneWeb (source code and binaries).

In this organisation, the GeneWeb folder contains one or several GeneWeb distribution (detailed organisation of one distribution folder), and the GeneWeb-Bases folder contains one or several genealogy bases.

This setup has the advantage of maintaining active at least two running versions of GeneWeb which may be handy for moving bases from one version to the other.

The two command files execute the appropriate binaries installed in the GeneWeb folder.

Starting gwd and gwsetup

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Traces in terminal window at GeneWeb start.

With this folder organisation, clicking on $HOME/Genealogy/Gw-Mac-7.00.command (download it here, you have to execute a chmod +x on this file to use it) will open a terminal window, kill previously running versions of gwd and gwsetup, start a fresh one and open the same start page as above.

From sources

Compilation from sources requires installation of OCaml. This is best done with Opam which will handle module dependencies. Installing Opam is documented on the Web. Compiling GeneWeb in this context is a two step process:

The README and INSTALL files should provide additionnal informations.



GeneWeb Manual

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Use and manage genealogical databases

Technical annex

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