How does one install "afloat" on OS 10.8/Mountain Lion? On OS X, I want to show an always-foregrounded, transparent image while working on the application underneath it, for tracing purposes. As mentioned in this other stackexchange question, the solution is the application called afloat.

Great, so how do I get it to work? The old domain now just redirects to a github project page. There is no README, and there are no installation instructions. I found a closed/wontfix "how to install" ticket, and pieced together some probable instructions. This is what I have so far:


Download the SIMBL zip file
Unzip the file
Double-click/install SIMBL-0.9.9.pkg
Create SIMBL bundle dir: mkdir ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/
Reboot
Install from the git repo:




$ git clone https://github.com/millenomi/afloat.git
$ cd afloat
$ xcodebuild -configuration Release install
  # verbose output trimmed, except for last line:
  ** INSTALL SUCCEEDED **
$ mv /tmp/Afloat.dst/Users/`whoami`/Library/Bundles/Afloat.bundle/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/


So now what? Did I do this correctly? Am I supposed to see additional "Window" menu options?
It appears that this did work. I did find that my X11 app had the extra Afloat options in the Window menu. Reading around, it seems it only works on Cocoa apps, so I guess X11 is Cocoa but nothing else is.

I also found a downloadable dmg installer. I'll try this out too.