Followed the instructions over here: http://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/git-annex_on_OSX/

and had to install the following extra packages to be able to get make to start:

[realizes pcre-light is needed but pcre not installed on my mac]  
sudo port install pcre  
sudo cabal install pcre-light  

> Ah right, that is a new dependency. I've updated the forum page
> with this info.
> --[[Joey]] 

But then I got the following error:  

<pre>
ghc -O2 -Wall --make git-annex  
[ 7 of 52] Compiling BackendTypes     ( BackendTypes.hs, BackendTypes.o   

BackendTypes.hs:71:17:  
    No instance for (Arbitrary Char)  
      arising from a use of `arbitrary' at BackendTypes.hs:71:17-25  
    Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Arbitrary Char)  
    In a stmt of a 'do' expression: backendname <- arbitrary  
    In the expression:  
        do backendname <- arbitrary  
           keyname <- arbitrary  
             return $ Key (backendname, keyname)  
    In the definition of `arbitrary':  
        arbitrary = do backendname <- arbitrary  
                       keyname <- arbitrary  
                         return $ Key (backendname, keyname)  
make: *** [git-annex] Error 1  
</pre>

My knowledge of Haskell (had to lookup the spelling...) is more than rudimentary so any help would be appreciated.

> Hmm, it seems you may be missing part of the quickcheck haskell
> library, or have a different version than me.
> 
> The easy fix is probably to just edit BackendTypes.hs and delete the
> entire end of the file from line 68, "for quickcheck" down. This code
> is only used by the test suite (so "make test" will fail), 
> but it should get it to build. --[[Joey]]

---

Closing this bug because the above problem now has a solution documented on
the install page, and the below test suite failure problems should all be
resolved on OSX. [[done]] --[[Joey]]