For building SoQt on macOS platform, you should in general follow the instructions in the INSTALL file. This file contains additional information about building SoQt on Mac OS X. For more information on getting started, known issues, and more, see https://bitbucket.org/Coin3D/coin/wiki/Mac%20information%20page. General information ==================== Building SoQt on Mac OS X should be straightforward. If it isn't, we consider this a bug, so please let us know and we'll be happy to fix it. If you install Coin from the binary SDK, please note that you also have to install the CoinTools.pkg, since the coin-config utility is needed by SoQt/configure. SoQt is installed as SoQt.framework by default. For more information about frameworks, please refer to the README.MACOSX file that comes with Coin. Note that we do not support Mac OS 10.0.x. It will probably work just fine if you compile SoQt yourself, but we don't guarantee that. Please upgrade at least to 10.1, you will be amazed by the increase in performance and stability. Qt/Mac vs. Qt/X11 ================= SoQt is dependent on Trolltech's Qt library. On Mac OS X, you have two options: 1. Use the native Qt/Mac 2. Use X11 and Qt/X11 Qt/Mac is the Mac OS X native implementation of Qt. This will usually be your first choice, since it does not require any additional software to be installed, and provides the full Aqua look'n'feel. Alternatively, you can install Apple's X11 for Mac OS X, and use Qt/X11, the version of Qt used on all other UNIX systems. You will find instructions on how to do this below. Using SoQt together with the X11 Window system ============================================== To use SoQt with X11 and Qt/X11, follow these steps: 1. Install X11 for Mac OS X. X11 for Mac OS X offers a complete X Window System implementation for running X11-based applications on Mac OS X. It includes the full X11R6.6 technology including an X11 window server, Quartz window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm, and is fully integrated with Mac OS X. X11 is not installed by default, but in installer package should be included with your Mac OS X CDs. (If X11 is installed, you should be able to launch it via /Applications/Utilities/X11.app. If you do not have this application, you need to install X11.) Note that only Apple's X11 is supported. (XDarwin, the X installation through fink, or anything else will probably not work.) 2. Build and install the X11 version of Coin. In order to use X11 instead of Quartz/Aqua, use the --enable-darwin-x11 configure option. You need to build both Coin and SoQt using this option. So: $ /path/to/Coin/configure --enable-darwin-x11 $ make && sudo make install 3. Install Qt/X11. SoQt depends on Qt/X11. It does not really matter how you install Qt, but I suggest you use fink or DarwinPorts. 4. Install SoQt. Again, use the --enable-darwin-x11 configure option like you did for Coin. $ /path/to/SoQt/configure --enable-darwin-x11 $ make && sudo make install That should be all. Common problems (and solutions) =============================== Problems with older versions of Qt/Mac --------------------------------------- The first Qt/Mac releases contained a number of serious bugs that also affect SoQt. If you encounter strange behaviour, it might very well be that upgrading to the latest version of Qt/Mac will fix the problem. Undefined QTDIR in bash ----------------------- Note that if you use bash as your default shell, you must make it read your .bashrc file - it does not do that by default. So if you have defined QTDIR in your ~/.bashrc, and still configure fails with because it cannot find Qt, check if QTDIR is actually set: % echo $QTDIR If this is empty, you have a problem. Make sure you are actually using bash - % echo $SHELL ... and that the content of your ~/.bashrc looks reasonable, something like this: export QTDIR=/usr/local/qt export PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$PATH export MANPATH=$QTDIR/doc/man:$MANPATH export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:$QTDIR/lib If you are using bash, and your .bashrc is correct, but QTDIR doesn't get set, you have to make bash read your .bashrc file. To do that, create a file called ~/.bash_profile with the following content: if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi Open a new Terminal window - things should work now. If you still have problems, something else is wrong. In that case, feel free to let us know.