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). See the linux build page for instructions on how to build on linux platform.

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.

1. Get the Source Code

The Freesurfer source code can be cloned from the official Freesurfer github page:

git clone https://github.com/freesurfer/freesurfer.git

1.1. Get the Data Files

1.2. Get the Data Files

The Freesurfer repository contains a large number data files which are not included with a default git clone of the repo. Instead, these data files are distributed via the git-annex software. Users who only want the repository for the purposes of compiling binaries and/or inspecting source code, the git clone command from above is all you need to do. Users who want to run build time checks, or perform a full local installation, or just want all the contents of the repository, will need to add a special data store remote repository in order to retrieve these files.

To add the data store repository (this only needs to be done once):

git remote add datasrc  https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/freesurfer/repo/annex.git
git fetch datasrc

And to retrieve data files:

git annex get <filename>

The data files have been broken down into categories, those being required for build time checks, those required for a local installation, and everything else. Use one of the following commands depending on your needs:

## Get only the data files required for build time checks (1.9 GB)
git annex get --metadata fstags=makecheck .

## Get only the data files required for local installation (4.3 GB)
git annex get --metadata fstags=makeinstall .

## Just give me everything! Not Recommended (6.8 GB)
git annex get .

2. Install System Libraries

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

• XQuartz 2.7.5 (for OSX versions 10.9 and lower)

• XQuartz 2.7.6 (for OSX versions 10.10 and higher)

• gfortran 4.8.2

• MacPorts

Once MacPorts is installed, use it to install autoconf, automake, libtool, and gcc44:

$> sudo port install autoconf
$> sudo port install automake
$> sudo port install libtool
$> sudo port install gcc44

## Set gcc44 to be the default compiler
$> sudo port select --set gcc mp-gcc44
$> gcc --version
gcc (MacPorts gcc44 4.4.7_10) 4.4.7

As of the writing of this document (June 2016) freeview is unable to build on OSX 10.11 platforms (El Capitan). This is due to an incompatibility between qt4.7 and OSX 10.11. If you are building on a pre-OSX 10.11 platform, and want to build freeeview, you will need to download and install Qt 4.7.4.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:

3. Library Dependencies

In order to compile freesurfer, you will need to download and install our prebuilt bundle of 3rd party dependancies. Download the package and extract its content. Remember the extraction location as you will need to pass that directory to the configure script.

$> mkdir ~/osx-lion-packages
$> cd ~/osx-lion-packages
$> curl -O ftp://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/fs_supportlibs/prebuilt/OSX/osx-lion-packages.tar.gz
$> tar -xzvf osx-lion-packages.tar.gz

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 /home/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.):

$> cd ~/freesurfer
$> ./setup_configure
$> ./configure --with-pkgs-dir=/Users/USERNAME/osx-lion-packages --prefix=/Users/username/fs_install
$> make -j4
$> make install

Done!

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