Cheating Woopra to run on OS X/Intel 32bit

Woopra is a website analysis service that allows webmasters to monitor various statistics, and track and interact with individual users in real-time. This article covers how the Woopra client can be installed on some unsupported plattforms.

While installing the server side installation is easy as pie and done by inserting some lines of HTML in the site template, installing the Woopra client can be tricky. At least on Linux or OS X boxes.

Woopra requires Java SE 6, which does not ship withwas just released for OS X Leopard (Hey, it’s just one and a half years late.). You can download a beta version by joining the Apple Developer Connection (it’s free). However, the beta it is only available for Intel 64bit systems. PPC or Intel 32 bit systems are not yet and probably will never be supported.

I tried SoyLatte, Landon Fuller’s FreeBSD based port of Java SE 6 to OS X. It works well on all Intel-based systems running Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5).

However, I wasn’t able to get the installer to run correctly, as some internal directory references were screwed up. So what I did was pretty simple: I installed Woopra on a windows box and copied WoopraApplication.jar back to my OS X.

Now you can open Terminal.App and call your SoyLatte Java virtual machine and enjoy monitoring your users. Remember to set your $PATH correctly (e.g. export PATH=/usr/local/soylatte16-i386/bin/:$PATH.

java -cp WoopraApplication.jar woopraapplication.Main

But be warned: SoyLatte does not provide native graphics via Quarz, but only via X11 (you can find an X Server on your OS X Installation DVD).

Dear guys at Woopra.com: Please provide a pure Java package without an installer. Thanks.