Quick notes on building Gazebo classic on MacOS

GAZEBO_CLASSIC_OSX_INSTALL.md

Gazebo Classic - MacOS install from source

Quick notes on installing Gazebo classic on MacOS. There are some instructions here for installing from source, however there are only extensive instructions for installing from source for Ubuntu and MacOS users are pointed towards brew formulas. These instructions are based on the brew formula which is linked to.

Instructions

Install dependencies

brew install cmake pkg-config boost bullet dartsim doxygen ffmpeg freeimage graphviz gts ignition-common3 ignition-fuel-tools4 ignition-math6 ignition-msgs5 ignition-transport8 libtar ogre1.9 protobuf qt@5 qwt-qt5 sdformat9 simbody tbb tinyxml1 tinyxml2 urdfdom zeromq

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/gazebosim/gazebo-classic && cd gazebo-classic

NOTES:

• The -DQt5_DIR= is non-standard but neeeded since I have brew installed qt@5 as keg only to prevent issues.
• Not entirely sture about the CMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH settings, this is provided by brew check where libgazebo.11.dylib or similar is installed during make install

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DQt5_DIR=$(brew --prefix qt5)/lib/cmake/Qt5 \
    -DQWT_WIN_INCLUDE_DIR=$(brew --prefix qwt-qt5)/lib/qwt.framework/Headers \
    -DQWT_WIN_LIBRARY_DIR=$(brew --prefix qwt-qt5)/lib/qwt.framework \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH=/usr/local/lib

NOTE: For some reason qwt-qt5 installed the library as just qwt without lib prefix or any suffix. If the same happens to you you will need to set the following variables in cmake/SearchForStuff.cmake. Admittedly does not seem to be needed in the brew formula.

###########################
# Add the variables below #
###########################
set(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES "${CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES};")
set(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES "${CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES};")
###########################
find_library(QWT_LIBRARY NAMES qwt-qt5 qwt PATHS
  /usr/local/lib
  /usr/local/lib/qwt.framework
  ${QWT_WIN_LIBRARY_DIR}
)

Build!

make -j4

Install

make install