Building OFP on Mac

Building OFP on Mac

This page builds OFP's engine and QtFRED from source on macOS. It follows the setup OFP's automated Mac builds use, but nobody has walked through it on a desktop machine yet. If something here doesn't match what you see, please let us know. For Windows see Building OFP on Windows, and for Linux see Building OFP on Linux.

If you only want to play or make a mod with OFP, you don't need any of this: see Using OFP with Knossos.NET.

What you need

Builds work on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, for macOS 10.15 or newer.

1. Xcode Command Line Tools, for the compiler. In Terminal:

   xcode-select --install
   

   The full Xcode app works too, but isn't needed.

2. Homebrew, then CMake, Ninja and Git:

   brew install cmake ninja git
   

The libraries the engine uses (including Qt for QtFRED, FFmpeg, SDL3, OpenAL and FreeType) either build from OFP's source tree or are downloaded ready-made by CMake, so you don't need to install them yourself.

1. Get the source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ofp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com.git OFP
cd OFP

If you already cloned without --recursive, run git submodule update --init --recursive inside the clone. Without the submodules, CMake stops with External submodules could not be found.

2. Configure

Make a build folder and run CMake from it. Replace ~/FreeSpace2 with the folder that holds your FreeSpace 2 data:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Ninja .. \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=FastDebug \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME/FreeSpace2" \
  -DQT_USE_PRECOMPILED=ON

What the options do:

• CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE: FastDebug is optimized but keeps the debug checks for mod data, which is what modders usually want: it reports table and mission errors that Release skips. Release is for playing, Debug for running under a debugger.
• CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: where ninja install copies the apps.
• QT_USE_PRECOMPILED=ON: downloads a ready-made Qt 6 for QtFRED. To use your own Qt 6 (for example from Homebrew), leave this out.

The build matches your Mac's processor. To build for the other kind, add -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=x86_64 (Intel) or -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64 (Apple Silicon).

When it works, the last line is -- Build files have been written to: ....

Other useful options, added as -D<name>=<value>:

Option	Default	What it does
FSO_BUILD_QTFRED	ON	Build QtFRED.
FSO_BUILD_WITH_VULKAN	ON	Build the Vulkan renderer.
FSO_BUILD_WITH_OPENGL	ON	Build the OpenGL renderer.
FSO_BUILD_TESTS	OFF	Build the unit tests.
FSO_BUILD_TOOLS	OFF	Build some FSO tools.

3. Build

ninja install

This builds everything and copies the engine and QtFRED into CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX as .app bundles. The first build takes a while; later builds only rebuild what changed.

4. Run

Start the apps from your FreeSpace 2 folder. To pass command line options such as -mod MyMod, run the executable inside the bundle from Terminal, for example:

./fs2_open_<version>-FASTDBG.app/Contents/MacOS/fs2_open_<version>-FASTDBG -mod MyMod

The exact names depend on the version and configuration. Settings, logs and pilots go in ~/Library/Application Support/HardLightProductions/FreeSpaceOpen/.

Keeping up with OFP

git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd build
ninja install

Ninja reruns CMake by itself when CMake files change. To start over with different options, delete the build folder and configure again.