Marc Liyanage: Mac hero.

Mac users of a certain level of technical curiosity may well recognize the name. About a year ago, perhaps a bit more, all the major US-market Mac publications both online and in print included tutorials on installing MySQL; all the articles turned to Mr. Liyanage’s pre-compiled binaries in the tutorials rather than explaining the intricacies of compilation from source, a wise call for a Mac audience.

(Non-Mac people – stick with me here: I think that Liyanage’s site is a model for presenting information about and access to personal development and technical projects, especially his minimal, exemplary and crystal clear installation instructions, such as these, for his MySQL package.)

He offers continually updated and evolving installation packaes and instructions for both MySQL (his package becoming the basis of the Mac OS X official release) and PHP, as well as certain other less widespread tools. This much is widely known. But look again!

  • A comprehensive support bulletin board. (For those keeping score at home, Marc’s responded personally with in 24 hours each time I’ve had a question).
  • Miscellaneous other software.
  • A useful Applescript, “Open Terminal Here;” one adds an alias of the script to one’s windowbar. When run, it opens a new Terminal session in the current working directory represented by the open window. Being Marc, he’s configured the session such that the titlebar presents the full path to the directory. Useful! Elegant!
  • And finally, a roundup of other people’s software that Mr. Liyanage appreciates:
    • AutoPair, a text-entry widget that automatically inserts opening and closing quotes, parens, and so foth, positioning your cursor between them – something that makes coding noticeably smoother.
    • MacSFTP, which provides a GUI for FTP-like file transfers over SSH.
    • and hometown heroes The Omni Group. I remain an idiot, based on the evidence of my failure to develop some sort of journalistic pitch about this outfit.

If only all software sites were as comprehensive, clean, and reliable.