This page is targeted at those who wish to develop and build the freesurfer source code on their Mac OSX platform. These instructions have been tested for Mac 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

Contents

  1. Get the Source Code
  2. Get the Libraries
  3. Set Your Path
  4. Setup, Configure, Make

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

2. Get the Libraries

You will need to download and install gfortran, qt4.7.4 and a prepackaged bundle of open-sourced libraries on your system.

The download and install of gfortran and Qt is straight forward, just click the .dmg file. To install the prepackaged bundle of open-source libraries, execute the following command after downloading it: 

mkdir -p /usr/pubsw/packages
tar -C /usr/pubsw/packages -xzvf DownloadedFileName.tar.gz

IMPORTANT: Do to a Qt bug, after you install Qt you must delete line 320 from the file /Library/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Headers/qglobal.h (Removing the line that says '#warning "This version of Mac OS X is unsupported"')

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 /Users/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.)

If your on Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 

./setup_configure
./configure \
      --prefix=/Users/USER/freesurfer \
      --with-vtk-cocoa-dir=/usr/pubsw/packages/vtk/5.6.1_cocoa
make -j4
make install

If your on Mac OSX 10.7 or 10.8 (Lion or Mountain Lion): 

./setup_configure
./configure \
      --prefix=/Users/USER/freesurfer \
      --with-vtk-cocoa-dir=/usr/pubsw/packages/vtk/5.6.1_cocoa \
      --disable-tcltk-apps \
      --with-qt=/usr/bin \
      --with-Mac32-GUIs

make -j4
make install

Done!

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