Building ART on macOS

These instructions reproduce, step by step, what the official macos.yml GitHub Actions workflow does to produce the macOS .dmg releases published on the releases page.

Supported variants

Variant	Runner	Homebrew prefix	Extra library	Notes
Intel (x64)	macos-15-intel	/usr/local	—	Set HOMEBREW_PREFIX manually
Apple Silicon (arm64)	macos-14	/opt/homebrew (default)	SIMDE	HOMEBREW_PREFIX is already set by the runner environment

A Debug build with AddressSanitizer enabled can also be produced (-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DWITH_SAN="address -fsanitize-recover=address"), matching the workflow’s debug input.

1. Base packages via Homebrew

brew install \
  gtkmm3 \
  gtk-mac-integration \
  little-cms2 \
  meson \
  cmake \
  fftw \
  exiv2 \
  lensfun \
  pkgconfig \
  automake \
  libtool \
  opencolorio \
  librsvg \
  adwaita-icon-theme \
  libomp \
  ctl \
  expat

On Apple Silicon only, also install SIMDE:

brew install simde

On Intel Macs, Homebrew’s prefix is not automatically exported in the shell environment the way it is on Apple Silicon runners, so set it explicitly:

export HOMEBREW_PREFIX=/usr/local

(On Apple Silicon, HOMEBREW_PREFIX is normally already /opt/homebrew — check with brew --prefix and export it if it isn’t set.)

2. Dependencies built from source

Homebrew’s little-cms2, librsvg, and system GTK+ are not quite what ART needs, so the CI rebuilds a few pieces itself.

LCMS2 2.17

curl -O -L https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/lcms/lcms/2.17/lcms2-2.17.tar.gz
tar xzf lcms2-2.17.tar.gz
cd lcms2-2.17
./configure --prefix=/opt/local
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
sudo make install
cd ..

LibRaw (latest master, with OpenMP support)

export C_FLAGS="-Xpreprocessor -fopenmp ${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/lib/libomp.dylib -I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/include"

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LibRaw/LibRaw.git
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LibRaw/LibRaw-cmake.git
cd LibRaw
ln -s ../LibRaw-cmake/CMakeLists.txt
ln -s ../LibRaw-cmake/cmake
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/local/lib/pkgconfig
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DENABLE_X3FTOOLS=1 \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/local \
  -DOpenMP_C_FLAGS="$C_FLAGS" \
  -DOpenMP_CXX_FLAGS="$C_FLAGS" \
  -DOpenMP_C_LIB_NAMES=libomp \
  -DOpenMP_CXX_LIB_NAMES=libomp \
  -DOpenMP_libomp_LIBRARY="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/lib/libomp.dylib" \
  -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-Wno-unused-command-line-argument -Wno-deprecated-register -Wno-unknown-warning-option"
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
sudo make install
cd ../..

Patched GTK+ 3.24.43 (Quartz colorspace fix)

ART’s macOS build patches GTK+ to fix colour handling on the native Quartz backend, then installs it into /opt/local alongside the other custom libraries:

curl -O https://download.gnome.org/sources/gtk+/3.24/gtk%2B-3.24.43.tar.xz
tar xJf gtk%2B-3.24.43.tar.xz
cd gtk+-3.24.43
# Patch is shipped inside the ART repository:
patch -p1 < ../ART/tools/osx/gdk-window-quartz-colorspace.patch
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/expat/lib/pkgconfig"
meson setup build \
  -Dbuildtype=release \
  -Dprefix=/opt/local \
  -Ddemos=false -Dexamples=false -Dtests=false \
  -Dx11_backend=false -Dintrospection=false \
  -Dc_args=-I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/include \
  -Dc_link_args=-I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/lib
cd build
meson compile
sudo meson install
cd ../..

3. Configure and build ART

git clone https://github.com/artraweditor/ART.git
mkdir build && cd build

# Set to 1 only for the Apple Silicon (arm64) build:
ART_SIMDE=0

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/local/lib/pkgconfig:${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/expat/lib/pkgconfig"
export C_FLAGS="-Xpreprocessor -fopenmp ${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/lib/libomp.dylib -I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/include"

cmake ../ART \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DENABLE_CTL=1 \
  -DENABLE_LIBRAW=1 \
  -DENABLE_SIMDE=${ART_SIMDE} \
  -DOpenMP_C_FLAGS="$C_FLAGS" \
  -DOpenMP_CXX_FLAGS="$C_FLAGS" \
  -DOpenMP_C_LIB_NAMES=libomp \
  -DOpenMP_CXX_LIB_NAMES=libomp \
  -DOpenMP_libomp_LIBRARY="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/libomp/lib/libomp.dylib" \
  -DCTL_INCLUDE_DIR="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/include/CTL" \
  -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/include -Wno-unused-command-line-argument -Wno-deprecated-register -Wno-unknown-warning-option"

make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
make install

This produces build/Release/ART.app (or build/Debug/ART.app for a debug build).

Update the Lensfun camera/lens database:

lensfun-update-data

(Optional, matches CI) Install exiftool, used as a fallback for metadata handling on some raw formats:

wget https://exiftool.org/ver.txt
pkgname="ExifTool-$(cat ver.txt).pkg"
wget "https://sourceforge.net/projects/exiftool/files/${pkgname}/download" -O "${pkgname}"
sudo installer -pkg "${pkgname}" -target /

4. Packaging as a .dmg

ART ships its own macOS bundling script, which collects all the required dynamic libraries into a self-contained .app and wraps it in a disk image:

OUTDIR=$(pwd)
cd build/Release/ART.app   # or build/Debug/ART.app
python3 "${OUTDIR}/ART/tools/osx/bundle_ART.py" \
  -o "${OUTDIR}" -v \
  -r /opt/local/lib \
  -r "${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/lib" \
  -p "${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}" \
  -e -I \
  -d "ART-macOS-$(uname -m)"
cd "${OUTDIR}"

For a debug build, add --debug to the bundle_ART.py invocation.

The -d argument produces a .dmg disk image named after the string you pass; open it to verify the bundled ART.app launches with no missing-library errors before distributing it.

Reference

This document is derived from the CI definition in .github/workflows/macos.yml. Refer to that file for the exact, up-to-date, authoritative build recipe — these instructions may lag behind future CI changes.