MacOS compatibility

[Oliver2213]

I'd like to add compatibility to run this on MacOS as well, since openscad and prusa slicer also run there as well.
I'm happy to open a PR, I just wanted to make sure this is a desired feature.

[tdeck]

Hi @Oliver2213, I'm really happy to get your message. I always intended to support MacOS but haven't gotten around to it yet, so if you're able to work through some of the issues that would be awesome.

I think the biggest challenge will be packaging the binary dependencies in a way that they can just work with 3DMake. Some of them are packaged as DMG files which you can't just run like AppImage files; I was thinking of copying out the contents into the deps/ directory tree and seeing if they will run like that. I also looked into mounting the DMG in Python but it seems a bit of a pain to do each run.

I have one request: can we make sure this also works on Intel Macs? That way I can use my old MacBook to build and test new releases.

If you run into any issues or don't understand something in 3DMake pease let me know. I am in Japan so it may take some time for me to reply.

[tdeck]

Hello @Oliver2213, just wanted to check in and see if you've had a chance to take a crack at this and what challenges you might have run into.

[Isaac-Leonard]

What's the current status of this? At the moment I just need a way to slice an stl file I've created with openscad

[tdeck]

@ashleycox has been working on this but I don't have a timeline for you. In order to unblock you, I took some time today and built a MacOS release which you can download here:

https://github.com/tdeck/3dmake/releases/tag/v0.9.1%2Bmacos

I've verified that you can build, orient, slice, and describe models with it. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test it very extensively, and it doesn't have the OpenSCAD or PrusaSlicer programs bundled with it like the other releases do. So you'll have to install those manually and then set environment variables to point to those programs, as I described in the release notes. @Isaac-Leonard since you have a GitHub account I figure you'll probably be able to follow the instructions, but if something is confusing please let me know.

For the record, the work involved to get this working is in the branch v0.9+macos.