aliBuild prerequisites for macOS

ALICE software on macOS is supported on a best effort basis. Even though we systematically check macOS builds there is no guarantee that software builds or runs correctly. Support requests might have low priority. That said, we were able to successfully build on:

  • Big Sur (11.0)
  • Monterey (12.0) both x86 and M1

Get Xcode

Xcode bundles the necessary tools to build software in the apple ecosystem including compilers, build systems and version control

  • Download it from the App Store
  • Open once installed. It will ask to install additional components - approve the action.
  • Open a terminal (Applicaions>Utilities>Terminal) and install the command line tools using:
    sudo xcode-select --install
  • approve the license conditions by
    sudo xcodebuild -license

Get Homebrew

Homebrew is a command-line package manager for macOS used to install software packages similar to yum on CentOS or apt on Ubuntu.

  • Install Homebrew using the instructions on their webpage.
  • Once installed detect any problems regarding Homebrew and your system using
    brew doctor

Install the required packages

Note that Homebrew does not run as root. Do not prepend sudo to any of the following commands.

  • Install the prerequisites and aliBuild via:

    brew install alisw/system-deps/o2-full-deps alisw/system-deps/alibuild

  • Edit or create ~/.zprofile and add

    export PATH="/usr/local/opt/gettext/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
  • Close Terminal and reopen it to apply changes.

The mac search engine (Spotlight) will be indexing the build directory which can have severe effects on your system performance. To avoid that, you can exclude your working directory (we are assuming ~/alice - create if not yet existing). Go to (Apple) menu>System preferences>Spotlight. In the Privacy tab, hit the + button. Now select the ~/alice directory and confirm.

You are now ready for installing aliBuild and start building ALICE software

Troubleshooting:

Some users have reported that homebrew commands might terminate with an error. The solution oddly enough seems to be to execute the above command multiple times until brew does not complain anymore.

If you have just upgraded your Xcode or macOS, you should run brew reinstall instead, in order to force the reinstallation of already installed packages. You also might want to run brew cleanup at the end to free up some space.

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