Friday, January 2, 2009

FileZilla Binary for Mac OS X Tiger

I'm sure many people are aware of FileZilla, the open source (S)FTP client. I switched over to using FileZilla a few years ago and it's been great.

A few days ago however, I decided to install it on a Mac. To my surprise, the official builds claim you need OS X 10.5 (Leopard), the most recent OS X release. I was using a Tiger (10.4) machine. I couldn't believe they didn't have a binary for Tiger.

For those of you not familiar with macs, let me break it down a little. Every couple years, Apple releases a new version of OS X. The difference between Leopard (10.5) and Panther (10.3) is comparable to the difference between Windows Vista and Windows 2000. Most but not all modern programs will still run on Panther. For the purposes of this analogy, we'll equate Tiger (10.4) with Windows XP. In other words, needing Leopard (and not being able to use Tiger) is roughly the same as needing Windows Vista (and not being able to use Windows XP). In other words, this is terrible.

The change was not intentional. The author simply doesn't have access to a build environment that he can use to create binaries for Mac Tiger. Since it's open source, you can always build it yourself. Being somewhat versed in software development, I decided to do just that.

There are several dependencies that FileZilla needs, and even when you have them, it's a bit confusing as to how to build them. Even on the forums, it was clear that several people had trouble building FileZilla on mac. So I decided to share my knowledge on the FileZilla wiki.

However, Mac people, by and large, are more like Windows people than like Unix people. In other words, software shouldn't need to be compiled. It should have a binary that just works. So I have decided to provide unofficial Mac Tiger FileZilla binaries.

http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Unofficial_Binaries

I don't have access to a PowerPC Mac, so I hope the binary works there. I know the Intel part works cause I've been using it for a couple days. Drop me a line if you have questions.

edit: updated FileZilla Binary to 3.2.0 (2009-Jan-12)
edit: Removed binary and put link to the FileZilla Unofficial Binaries page
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12 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 8, 2009 at 2:44 AM

    thanks! - works great on my 1 yr old iMac :)

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  2. Jordi Rosquillas TovillaFebruary 17, 2009 at 2:55 PM

    Thanks, its working fine on my Tiger os, are you planning on compiling version 3.2.1 ?

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  3. SanciousMarch 6, 2009 at 1:11 PM

    thanks a lot! it works fine with my tiger ppc on my powerbook g4 12" 1.5ghz

    i hope you will compile new versions!

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  4. AnonymousMarch 22, 2009 at 7:10 PM

    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownApril 11, 2009 at 4:54 PM

    Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousApril 20, 2009 at 4:59 PM

    Thank you very much for this.
    I am running Tiger (again. Didn't like Leopard) and made the mistake of updating my version of Filezilla which was useless.
    So, thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousApril 23, 2009 at 1:52 PM

    Thanks for your work! I have an old Sawtooth with a processor upgrade running Tiger and this compile worked just fine.

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  8. UnknownMay 2, 2009 at 9:46 AM

    Many thanks! I've been look for this for quite some time.

    ReplyDelete
  9. jayseyeAugust 30, 2009 at 4:00 PM

    Thank you for keeping this updated, and for "getting it" about open source binaries for Mac users!

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  10. HeatherSeptember 16, 2009 at 10:23 PM

    Great work, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. PaladinOctober 17, 2009 at 5:09 AM

    Love you

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownJanuary 20, 2010 at 8:49 PM

    thanks. obrigada!!

    ReplyDelete

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