This page is targeted at those who wish to develop and build the freesurfer source code on their OSX platform. These instructions have been tested for OS X 10.7, 10.9 (Lion and Mavericks).

1. Get the Source Code

If you already have a working local copy of the CVS repository then you can skip this step.

# Local CVS access:
$> export CVSROOT=/space/repo/1/dev
$> cvs checkout -P dev

# Or for remote access:
$> export CVSROOT=:ext:USER@door.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu:/space/repo/1/dev
$> cvs checkout -P dev

Or, you can get readonly CVS access to the source code by following the directions on this page:

2. Download and Install the Libraries

In order to build Freesurfer, the following prerequisite software will need to be downloaded and installed on your OSX system:

• Qt 4.7.4

• gfortran 4.8.2

• MacPorts (for installing gcc)

• XQuartz 2.7.5 (OSX versions 10.9 and lower)

• XQuartz 2.7.6 (OSX versions 10.10 and higher)

IMPORTANT: After you install Qt, you must delete line 320 from the file /Library/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Headers/qglobal.h, the line that says "#warning "This version of Mac OS X is unsupported"". Next, install Xcode Command Line Tools my typing the following on the command line:

$> xcode-select --install

After Xcode has been installed, we need to install gcc v4.4.7 using MacPorts:

$> sudo port install gcc44
$> cd /opt/local/bin
$> sudo ln -s gcc-mp-4.4 gcc
$> sudo ln -s g++-mp-4.4 g++

Download and install the prebuilt package of open-source libraries:

$> curl -O ftp://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/fs_supportlibs/prebuilt/lion/MacOSX_Lion_Packages.tar.gz
$> sudo mkdir -p /usr/pubsw/packages
$> sudo tar -C /usr/pubsw/packages -xzvf MacOSX_Lion_Packages.tar.gz

3. Set Your Path

$> export PATH=/usr/pubsw/packages/autotools/bin:$PATH

4. Setup, Configure, Make

Determine the location you want Freesurfer to be installed. For example, in case case we will assume the user wants freesurfer to be installed in /User/USER/freesurfer. Type the following commands in the top-level Freesurfer directory (the directory that contains configure.in and all the mri_* and mris_* directories.)

$> ./setup_configure
$> ./configure --prefix=/User/USER/freesurfer
$> make -j4
$> make install

Done! Send your comments/questions/feedback to zkaufman@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu