GRASS GIS on Mac OS X

GRASS version: 6.0.1
GRASS

Make sure you have the latest GRASS 6.0 source. GRASS 6.0.0 requires a few patches that are not rewqired in later versions.

In a Terminal type:

$ cd path_to_folder_containing_grass_source_tar_gz
$ tar -zxf grass-6.0.1.tar.gz

One change you can make if you like. You can enable GRASS to write LZW compressed TIFFs (reading them requires no changes). This is independent of r.out.gdal's ability to export LZW compressed TIFFs. In raster/r.out.tiff/r.out.tiff.c, change line 95 to read:

compopt->options        = "none,packbit,deflate,lzw";

and before line 123 add:

	else if (strncmp(compopt->answer,"lzw",7) == 0)
		compression = COMPRESSION_LZW;

Then you're ready for configure (this is a very long configure, so it's broken up into two pieces):

$ cd grass-6.0.1
$ ./configure --enable-sysv --with-freetype --with-freetype-includes="/usr/local/graphicslibs/include/freetype2 /usr/local/graphicslibs/include" --with-freetype-libs=/usr/local/graphicslibs/lib --with-gdal=/usr/local/gislibs/bin/gdal-config --with-proj --with-proj-includes=/usr/local/gislibs/include --with-proj-libs=/usr/local/gislibs/lib --with-jpeg-includes=/usr/local/graphicslibs/include --with-jpeg-libs=/usr/local/graphicslibs/lib --with-png-includes=/usr/local/graphicslibs/include --with-png-libs=/usr/local/graphicslibs/lib --with-tiff-includes=/usr/local/graphicslibs/include --with-tiff-libs=/usr/local/graphicslibs/lib \
--with-fftw-includes=/usr/local/grasslibs/include --with-fftw-libs=/usr/local/grasslibs/lib --with-tcltk-includes=/usr/local/X11R6/include --with-tcltk-libs=/usr/local/X11R6/lib --with-cxx --with-x --with-glw --without-odbc --enable-shared --with-motif --with-motif-includes=/usr/local/X11R6/include --with-motif-libs=/usr/local/X11R66/lib

If you installed PostGreSQL, add this to the configure line (make sure there is a space after the last option and this):

--with-postgres-includes=/usr/local/pgsql/include --with-postgres-libs=/usr/local/pgsql/lib

otherwise add this:

--without-postgres

And do it:

$ make
$ sudo make install

Depending on your Mac's power, make could take up to an hour or more to build, so take a break, read a book, have lunch, go for a walk, multitask...

Note: There is a setting for when applications crash - whether to display some sort of notice, a crash report for Apple or nothing. This can be set by TinkerTool and other utilities. I can't remember what the default from Apple is, but if a display is set, when running configure, you will probably get a crash dialog, you can just cancel/close this.

Also, GRASS building emits some beeps. Don't worry, just ignore them, your Mac isn't about to explode. Just some harmless warning/error (something about fake mapset not found).