Building GNU Typist 2.10 – macOS

GNU Typist is a great source for learning touch typing. You can install it on your own at your Mac. Just follow the steps.

1. Get the source of typist

# make sure to have all sources inside ~/opt/src

mkdir -p ~/opt/src
cd ~/opt/src

curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gtypist/gtypist-2.10.tar.gz
tar zxf gtypist-2.10.tar.gz

2. Get the source of ncurses

curl -O https://invisible-island.net/datafiles/release/ncurses.tar.gz
tar zxf ncurses.tar.gz

3. Get the source of iconv

curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.18.tar.gz
tar zxf libiconv-1.18.tar.gz

4. Create place where you want to have all the stuff

mkdir -p ~/opt/usr/local/

5. Build ncurses

# pay attention to --enable-widec
cd ~/opt/src/ncurses-6.3
./configure --enable-widec --with-shared \
  --enable-pc-files --prefix=$HOME/opt/usr/local/ncurses/ncurses-6.3 \
  --with-pkg-config-libdir=$HOME/opt/usr/local/ncurses/ncurses-6.3/pkg-config
make
make install

6. Build iconv

cd ~/opt/src/libiconv-1.18
./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/usr/local/iconv/iconv-1.18
make
make install

7. Build GNU Typist

cd ~/opt/src/gtypist-2.10

CFLAGS  = "-D_DARWIN_C_SOURCE -I$HOME/opt/usr/local/ncurses/ncurses-6.3/include/ncursesw \
           -I$HOME/opt/usr/local/ncurses/ncurses-6.3/include"

LDFLAGS = "-L$HOME/opt/usr/local/ncurses/ncurses-6.3/lib \
           -Wl,-search_paths_first -lncursesw"

./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/usr/local/gtypist/gtypist-2.10 \
  --with-libiconv-prefix=$HOME/opt/usr/local/iconv/iconv-1.18

# we want to skip a step with makeinfo exectuion
make MAKEINFO=true

# this way we skip a step where man pages are built
make install-exec

8. Run GNU Typist

$HOME/opt/usr/local/gtypist/gtypist-2.10/bin/gtypist