macOS installation

Installation Procedure

Prerequisites: XCode Command Line Tools

In order to compile Webots on Mac, you will need to install Apple XCode. XCode is free and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. Webots will need principally the gcc (GNU C Compiler), make and git. To install these commands, start XCode and go to XCode menu, Preferences, Downloads, Components and click Install for "Command Line Tools".

Clone the Github Repository

From a Terminal app, create these sub-directories in your home directory:

cd
mkdir software
mkdir develop
cd develop
git clone https://github.com/omichel/webots.git
cd webots
git submodule init
git submodule update

Note: If you get the following error: xcrun: Error: could not stat active Xcode path '/Developer'. (No such file or directory), you can fix it with export DEVELOPER_DIR="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer"

Install Homebrew

Follow the installation instructions from there: https://brew.sh

And then install the following packages:

brew install cmake swig wget

Install Python 3.6

Install the latest version of Python 3.6 from https://www.python.org

Install Java

From the Java SE Development Kit 1.8.92 for Mac OS X from: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html

Install ffmpeg

Download the latest build from http://www.evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ (for example ffmpeg-3.4.1.7z). Extract it, and put the extracted binary (ffmpeg) into ~/develop/webots/webots/util/.

Build Webots

You are know ready to compile Webots and all the required resources. The first time you compile Webots some dependencies will be automatically downloaded and installed in the Webots development environment.

make release -jX  # X is the number of cores.

In addition to the default release target, the following targets are also available:

• debug: Compiles with debugging symbols.
• profile: Compiles with debugging and profiling symbols (required to run GNU gprof for example).
• distrib: Compiles Webots in release mode and then create the distribution package.
• clean: Clean the compilation outputs.
• cleanse: Deep clean (some additional files such as dependencies are removed too).

Advanced Tips

Create a Webots.app bundle

In order to launch Webots directly from Finder you could create a Webots.app directory with symbolic links to the Webots local repository content as following:

cd ~/develop
mkdir Webots.app
cd Webots.app/
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/Contents Contents
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/resources resources
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/lib lib
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/bin bin
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/change_logs change_logs
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/doc doc
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/include include
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/projects projects
ln -s ${WEBOTS_HOME}/util util

You can now launch Webots.app from the Finder by double-clicking on it.

Environment variables

It is convenient to add the following environment variables into your ~/.bash_profile file:

export WEBOTS_HOME=$HOME/develop/webots/webots      # Defines the path to Webots home.
export WEBOTS_ALLOW_MODIFY_INSTALLATION=1           # If defined, you are allowed to modify files in the Webots home using Webots.
export WEBOTS_DISABLE_SAVE_PERSPECTIVE_ON_CLOSE=1   # If defined, Webots will not save perspective changes when closed.
export WEBOTS_DISABLE_WORLD_LOADING_DIALOG=1        # If defined, the lodaing world progress dialog will never be displayed.

To make the changes available close and reopen your Terminal.