Firefly for Mac OS X pages

As of February 23, 2009, Firefly team is proud to announce the availability of the first official release of the Firefly package for Mac OS X/Intel platform.

List of some key features:

• Free and fast! Proven reliability and performance of Windows/Linux Firefly.
• Feature rich - supports all the functionality of Windows/Linux-based Firefly.
• Parallel jobs run on SMP/multi-core hardware without additional software.
• Installation is straightforward with a native DMG installer. New drag and drop job submission applications make running jobs significantly easier and more intuitive than most other ab-initio computational chemistry programs on the Mac platform. Just drag and drop your input file on to the appropriate run application for the number of CPU cores desired (or double-click and select) and your job will simply launch and open the output in a suitable text editor. All the necessary output files that may be needed for future follow-up jobs are automatically delivered to the input file directory. Everything is intended to be Mac friendly including a set of Mac-specific step by step Quick Start and Complete install and usage guides that should cover 90%+ of all potential questions for new users.
• A batch job submission application and a STOP-FIREFLY-JOBS application which allows multiple job management.
• A good set of third-party Mac native graphical applications is available to prepare input jobs as well as to visualize the output of those runs (e.g., WebMO). Most visualization tools that are not available natively for Mac work fine through Darwine or Crossover Wine.
• There is an active community of Mac beta testers and Firefly community users to answer questions for new users.

The Firefly for Mac project was initiated by Thomas Patko in a effort to bring the excellent Firefly ab-initio software to the Mac platform. It was made possible by extensive collaboration with the main Firefly project team and tireless beta testing and suggestions from Nick Greeves. Although Thomas is the major developer of Mac-specific code, as well as primary documentation contributor in the "Mac Port" at present in this initial release, the primary goal of the project is to develop the Mac edition continuously to make it more accessible and easy to use for chemists worldwide operating the Apple Macintosh platform.

The best method to accomplish this is to have an active collaborative environment where users are free to request features, report any bugs, and to have multiple contributors to the codebase for the "Mac Port".

The most recent official version of Firefly for Mac OS X is version 8.1.1

• License Agreement and Registration Templates

• Quick Start Guide for Mac OS X version of Firefly v 8.1.0  Last updated: January 1, 2013.

• Installation notes & usage guide for Mac OS X version of Firefly v. 8.1.0  Last updated: January 1, 2013.

• Firefly version 8.1.1 build # 9295 Install image for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Lion and newer versions of OS X Last updated: November 29, 2015. Note: this version is not compatible with Mac OS X Leopard and older versions of OS X.

The current source code and build instructions/documentation corresponding to the official 8.1.0 release of the Firefly for Mac job launch and run apps for developers is available upon request.

• The main Firefly Homepage

• List of program capabilities

• Current Firefly documentation

• Download area: Windows/Linux Firefly, external basis set libraries, etc...

• Firefly forum

• Contacts

• Running from a network drive is not currently supported. All of the file paths as well as the program itself need to run from a local drive.

• If disk space is an issue for some calculations to use just the internal drives (meaning that they would be out of space with this approach), we would suggest to use a large RAID array connected with a thunderbolt cable (it is very, very fast). This external raid array drive would still be a fully supported local drive from the WINE point of view (mounted under the /Volumes directory), but give ample additional space for temporary files which are probably the culprit for running out of local disk space. The path to the temporary files if fully configurable with all of drag and drop apps as well as the commandline script.

• If a user wishes to modify any of the default variables for any drag and drop application (including where the temporary file reside), here is the easiest way to do it: Go to the "RUN-FIREFLY-JOBS" directory. Make a copy of the application that you wish to modify. As an example, let us suppose that I wish to modify the "Run-Firefly-Job-4-Cores.app" in the main "RUN-FIREFLY-JOBS" directory. Rename the app something reasonable that reflects the planned change. Do not leave an spaces or use any special characters. One example would be something like "Run-Firefly-Job-4-Cores-RAID-TEMP.app" Right-click on the copied and renamed application and choose the "Shown Package Contents" option. Double click on the "Contents" directory that opens in a new window after choosing this "Shown Package Contents" option. Double click on the "Resources" directory. Open the file with the extension *.config with a suitable text editor such as TextWrangler or BBEdit. Each of the *.config files are heavily commented to allow the user to modify all of the configuration variables that are loaded from this file at the start of the drag and drop application as may be desired. In our example of the "Run-Firefly-Job-4-Cores.app" drag and drop job launch application the path to the temporary files is found the fourth line and default is /tmp/FIREFLY/SCRATCH/ as shown. Any alternate local path may be selected (including RAID drives attached through a thunderbolt connector as recommended for large jobs with big temporary files and limited local internal hard drive space situations). The user should bear in mind that changing any of the default values for any of the variables may cause the application to cease working correctly if done improperly and so care should be taken with any modifications. In the case of the modification of the temporary file path directory it is recommended to select a path without spaces or special characters and to add the trailing "/" to the path designation to ensure proper job runs. Since we are working on just a copy of the original application if any problems are encountered that cannot be solved, we can always discard and restart from a new copy of a known working original.

Firefly team is grateful to all beta testers. Our special thanks to Nick Greeves and Lyndsey Vernon, University of Liverpool. This Mac release of Firefly would not be ever possible without efforts and constant development made by Thomas Patko, who was the main driving force behind Firefly for Mac project.