Installing CKAN on OSX

Installing manually

This guide assume that your downloads go into the default "Downloads" directory.

1. Download and install Mono

   Mono 5 (for MacOS High Sierra)

   Mono 4 (for El Capitan users)

   Mono 3 (for Yosemite users)

2. Get the latest version of CKAN from the releases page

3. Press Cmd+Spacebar on your keyboard, type "Terminal" and the press Enter

4. In the terminal that opens type the following with an Enter keystroke after each line

   cd Downloads
   mono ckan.exe
   

   Note that you may need to specify the architecture (32 bit is required for the GUI). If plain mono ckan.exe does not launch the app, then try making mono more chatty. The verbose setting can be removed once you figure out how to get it running, but its error messages might make that process easier:

   mono --verbose --arch=32 ckan.exe
   

Installing via Homebrew

NOTE: An earlier version of Mono will be installed, which is not compatible with CKAN under El Capitan (see this issue)

brew tap homebrew/games
brew install ckan
ckan help

Note that on some macs the loading of CKAN can generate spamming of Fontconfig warnings about not having a valid region tag and ignoring UTF-8 in the terminal. If this is the case the following line can be used instead of mono ckan.exe

LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8" && mono ckan.exe

After ensuring that ckan.exe runs correctly you should check out the CKAN OSX automator apps.

After launching, go to the top of the CKAN window and click Settings>KSP Command line and change the path from what is there

to ./KSP.app/Contents/MacOS/KSP

NOTE: On OSX Yosemite, this needs to be ./KSP.app --args -single-instance, per this support issue.

You can verify that this is the correct path by going to your Kerbal Space Program folder, usually /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Kerbal Space Program

NOTE: if you installed KSP from GOG rather than Steam, then it probably lives in /Applications/Kerbal\ Space\ Program and that folder is not navigable from the CKAN UI. The way around this is to create a link in your home directory:

cd $HOME
ln -s /Applications/Kerbal\ Space\ Program KSP

Now a directory "KSP" will appear in your "Personal Folder" in the file navigator within CKAN.

Right clicking KSP and choosing "Show Package Contents"

and finding the KSP executable

install notes:

when you install Mono, you most likely are installing it to the base /applications folder where the path is ( Macintosh HD/Applications ) but... when you run ( mono ckan.exe ) it will perform "things" to the user specific folder where the path is ( Macintosh HD/Users/yourname ) so .... if you are getting ERRORs during the initial startup of CKAN when you run ( mono ckan.exe ) you may need to go the User specific folder settings, by right clicking on the folder that has yourname on it, click GET INFO, and make sure the folder is not locked.