Mac osx Lion 10.7 installation issues

Unfortunately, you are in uncharted waters. I don't think anyone else has tried this yet. If it is possible, you should wait until the binary packages are built for OS X Lion.

If not, you might have some luck trying to rebuild FEniCS semi-manually using Dorsal (https://launchpad.net/dorsal/). But there too you will be on uncharted waters as I don't think anyone has tried it yet. :)

Thanks for the post, will try dorsal again then,
I tried dorsal initially it said operating system could not be found
initially this was the error message

./dorsal.sh returned
Found configuration for project FEniCS.
Error: Platform to build for not specified (and not automatically recognised).
If you know the platform you are interested in (myplatform), please specify it directly, as:
./dorsal.sh FEniCS/platforms/myplatform.platform
If you'd like to learn more, refer to the file USAGE for detailed usage instructions.

 and

./dorsal.sh /Users/Sudharsan/Downloads/dorsal-0.8.2/FEniCS/platforms/supported/snowleopard.platform
Found configuration for project FEniCS.
Fetching ParMetis-3.1.1
./dorsal.sh: line 55: wget: command not found
Failure with exit status: 127
Exit message: Error fetching ParMetis-3.1.1.

You first need to install Xcode, then MacPorts, and all the packages suggested by the snowleopard.package ("port install blah blah").

What is the default Python version on OS X Lion? I guess it includes 2.6, but 2.7 is probably the default. In that case, some tweaks should be enough to get the binary package running on Lion.

Also, what is the output of "uname -r" on Lion?

Many Thanks to the reply
The output of uname -r on Lion is
"11.0.0"
and the python version(default) is Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832 ...)
how do we change it to 2.6 ?

Many Thanks to the reply
The output of uname -r on Lion is
"11.0.0"
and the python version(default) is Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832 ...)
how do we change it to 2.6 ?

Thanks.

Now, try to open /Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/bin/fenics-terminal and change line 15 from

    if [[ `uname -r | cut -d '.' -f1` != 10 ]]; then

to

    if [[ `uname -r | cut -d '.' -f1` != 11 ]]; then

Also change line 26 from

    python_prefix=`python -c "import sys;print sys.prefix"`

to

    python_prefix=`/usr/bin/python2.6 -c "import sys;print sys.prefix"`

Then try to open the FEniCS terminal by clicking on the icon. If that works, set Python 2.6 as the default by typing

    alias python=/usr/bin/python2.6

and then try to run some of the demo programs.

Note that I haven't tried this myself since I don't have access to a computer with OS X Lion on yet.

Thanks a lot for replying
all of the above steps worked.
1. I changed the /Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/bin/fenics-terminal contents and
Finally FENics terminal opened, so reset default python to 2.6 version but I still get error
I ran demo_navier-stokes.py and got

"Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "demo_navier-stokes.py", line 26, in <module>
    from dolfin import *
  File "/Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/__init__.py", line 13, in <module>
    from dolfin.cppimports import *
  File "/Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/cppimports.py", line 4, in <module>
    import dolfin.cpp as cpp
  File "/Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/cpp.py", line 28, in <module>
    _cpp = swig_import_helper()
  File "/Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/cpp.py", line 24, in swig_import_helper
    _mod = imp.load_module('_cpp', fp, pathname, description)
ImportError: dlopen(/Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/_cpp.so, 2): Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libmpi_cxx.0.dylib
  Referenced from: /Applications/FEniCS.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dolfin/_cpp.so
  Reason: image not found"

when I run the cpp file i get more errors, but cmake generates without any error!

Thanks again

Ok, it seems that the library /usr/lib/libmpi_cxx.0.dylib does not exist on Lion. Then we might be out of luck. What is the output of "ls -l /usr/lib/libmpi*"?

This is the output of "ls -l /usr/lib/libmpi*"

"ls: /usr/lib/libmpi*: No such file or directory"

and I navigated to usr/lib/lib and hit tab, and printed that output to preview and checked if there is any file or folder with name libmpi
but there wasn't any such file.
Thanks again for replying

It looks like Apple removed OpenMPI support in Lion. The binary package in its current form will therefore not work with Lion. Maybe I'll try to ship OpenMPI with the binary package in the future, however, you might have better luck with Dorsal in the meantime.

Thanks a lot for the reply
will try Dorsal as suggested by both of the users