Spent much of this afternoon frustrated at work… Tried to do something “smart” and use a provided virtual machine to run through a tutorial. First time using a virtual machine on that particular box was not pleasant. Completely slowed down my machine, and then the virtual box instance itself was slow to the point of uselessness. The VM would occasionally decide it was done, and would just close. When I finally got something close to working, VM-wise, after the first few steps in the tutorial, an instruction just didn’t work right.

So I’ve spent this evening working to get an environment on my home machine which’ll presumably let me get past the step that got blocked at work. Here’s the life of a computer geek:
* the software I need to run is compiled for a few different operating systems, but not mine.
* there is a link provided to the GitHub repository hosting the source. Good luck: the link goes to a project area that includes 4 pages of potential code repositories. Some of them are marked as no longer supported, but none is conveniently marked with a ‘Start Here’. Even the repository named Documentation is missing a README.md or any sort of file named ‘BuildMe’
* OK, maybe I can use a different operating system distribution by downloading a VirtualBox image of that operating system and getting it set up.
* Hmmm – VirtualBox installed – good. CentOS 64 bit image? Not so much – go find it.
* Now how to get the software RPMs on my CentOS 64 bit image? Need a shared drive. That requires a Guest Additions to be installed in my VM image.
* To install it on Linux requires me to add gcc and kernel-devel. Also prefers something called dkms, which I’ve not heard of before AND which can’t be found from my machine
* Finally got a shared mapped drive, after a few more Googles for missing steps. I’m still missing OpenGL support, I think, but am going to quietly ignore that until it becomes a problem for me.
* By the way, keyboard mappings vary significantly between CentOS and Mac. Meaning, stupid things like finding ‘*’ are a hunt and peck game across my keyboard. I have a README file now shared between the system to help remind me where things are.
* FINALLY have the file I wanted to share in the shared drive, moved over, granted with permissions to the user I want it to. `sudo yum install *.rpm` (after finding *, which is an intuitive Shift-]) complains about some missing libraries. Turns out there are steps listed in the software’s guide for installation of dependencies.

Let’s see – how many bullets above in terms of steps, before I get this software to a potentially runnable state? One has to be particularly bull-headed to continue moving forward. And particularly convinced that she’ll knock the next set of concerns. But sheesh.

OK, software’s installed. First execution – barf. But I know what the next thing is, and will tackle it tomorrow. It does help if one runs an IDE inside something with a windowing system, rather than just a terminal.