[Matplotlib-users] MacOS 10.6 install dependency building fails (r8214)

Hello,

It looks like the zlib website removes previous version of its library that were previously available for download, so the part in make.osx where http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz is fetched now fails (since the current version is 1.2.4). The error in the matplotlib building is not explicit enough (incorrect archive type) - maybe one could catch such 404s and print out an error suggesting to increase the ZLIBVERSION variable?

I tried changing ZLIBVERSION to 1.2.4 and the following occurs when building zlib:

...
gcc -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -I/Users/tom/install/include -I/Users/tom/install/include/freetype2 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk   -c -o inftrees.o inftrees.c
gcc -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -I/Users/tom/install/include -I/Users/tom/install/include/freetype2 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk   -c -o trees.o trees.c
gcc -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -I/Users/tom/install/include -I/Users/tom/install/include/freetype2 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk   -c -o uncompr.o uncompr.c
gcc -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -I/Users/tom/install/include -I/Users/tom/install/include/freetype2 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk   -c -o zutil.o zutil.c
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `libz.dylib', needed by `install-libs'.  Stop.
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make: *** [zlib] Error 2

If I manually go to the zlib directory and type make, it builds without a problem, so it looks like there is some kind of problem in the make.osx script.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Thomas