oot/docs/BUILDING_MACOS.md

# Building on macOS

**N.B.** C++17 is required to build the asset processing program that we use (ZAPD), so check your OS version can support this before proceeding.


## 1. Dependencies

For macOS, use Homebrew to install the following dependencies:

* coreutils
* make
* python3
* libpng
* bash
* clang-format
* libxml2

You can install them with the following commands:

```bash
brew update
brew install coreutils make python3 libpng bash clang-format libxml2
```

(The repository expects Homebrew-installed programs to be either linked correctly in `$PATH` etc. or in their default locations.)


## 2. Building mips-linux-binutils

The following instructions are written for MacOS users but should apply to any Unix-like system, with maybe some modifications at the end regarding the bash_profile.

Create destination dir for binutils
```bash
sudo mkdir -p /opt/cross
```

Create and enter local working dir
```bash
mkdir ~/binutils-tmp
cd ~/binutils-tmp
```

Get and extract binutils source
```bash
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.35.tar.bz2
tar xjf binutils-2.35.tar.bz2
```
(You may find this command does not work: if so, just access the URL in a browser and save it to `~/binutils-tmp`.)

Create and enter a build directory
```bash
mkdir build-binutils
cd build-binutils
```

Configure the build
```bash
../binutils-2.35/configure --target=mips-linux-gnu --prefix=/opt/cross --disable-gprof --disable-gdb --disable-werror
```

Make and install binutils
```bash
make -j
sudo make install
```

Edit your `~/.bash_profile`/`~/.zsh_profile` (or whichever shell you use) to add the new binutils binaries to the system PATH
```bash
echo "export PATH=$PATH:/opt/cross/bin" >> ~/.bash_profile
```

Reload `~/.bash_profile` (or just launch a new terminal tab)
```bash
source ~/.bash_profile
```

If this worked, you can now delete the temporary directory `~/binutils-tmp`.


## 3. Final note

Apple's version of `make` is very out-of-date, so you should use the brew-installed `gmake` in place of `make` in this repo from now on.

You should now be able to continue from [step 2](../README.md#2-clone-the-repository) of the Linux instructions.