The geek’s guide to upgrading to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Here are some good and bad things I’ve discovered since I’ve upgraded to 10.6 — I’ll keep adding to this post as I discover more.

Very new versions of software for software developers

• PHP 5.3 (the very newest version, with many “modern” features, finally)
• PHP also has Pear!
• PHP and mod_php are compiled with GD, praise the lord!
• Subversion 1.6.4 (10.5 didn’t have subversion at all)
• Apache 2.2.11 (same as 10.5 I believe)
• Python 2.6.1 (10.5 had 2.5.x I believe — there is also a 3.1.x series but AFAIK the majority of Python software is still made for 2.x) – easy_install is included, as I think it was in 10.5
• Still no MySQL…

Nice!

your locate database is gone

At least mine was. You can rebuild it like this:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

modifier key reassignment is now per-keyboard

A nice feature– but it took me 10 minutes of abject panic, despair, and tearing of clothes (and a couple reboots) before I noticed the new setting:

You can change audio input and output from the menu bar

No more need for the (excellent) SoundSource, you can now option-click the menu bar volume control and change input and output:

cp now has an -a flag

-a Same as -pPR options. Preserves structure and attributes of files but not directory structure.

Whoo hoo! It’s the little things…

Actually, I have no idea what “but not directory structure” means.