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, 10.11 (Lion, Mavericks, El Capitan).

Those who wish to add a binary to the freesurfer software suite should consult the 'Adding a new binary to the tree' section of the Developers Guide.

Contents

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

1. Get the Source Code

Users can download Freesurfer source code via the read-only git repo. A simple clone of the repo (187 Megs) is enough to perform a build of all freesurfer binaries. However, if a user wishes to perform full Freesurfer installation locally, he/she will need git-annex in order to download all the data files required for a full installation (6.6 Gigs). 

## Get the source code
$> git clone http://freesurfer.net/anonftp/pub/dist/freesurfer/repo/freesurfer.git

## Get data files (only required for full installation)
$> cd freesurfer
$> git annex get .

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:

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
$> sudo port select --set gcc mp-gcc44
$> gcc --version
gcc (MacPorts gcc44 4.4.7_10) 4.4.7

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