xschem/README_MacOS.md

Compilation Instructions for xschem on MacOS

In order to compile xschem properly on MacOS, we always need to reference the X libraries from XQuartz and change some compilation variables. The following dependencies are required:

• XQuartz: https://www.xquartz.org/releases/XQuartz-2.7.11.html
• Tcl: https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl8.6.10-src.tar.gz
• Tk: https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tk8.6.10-src.tar.gz

The first step is to install XQuartz and then compile Tcl and Tk. Nothing special on compiling these two, but we need to specify the X libraries from XQuartz when compiling Tk. Let's use the path /usr/local/opt/tcl-tk as destination folder.

Tcl compilation

Extract the Tcl sources and then go to the unix folder:

cd <extracted-folder>/unix
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk  
make
make install

Tk compilation

Same procedure as Tcl, but we need to specificy the Tcl and X libraries paths. XQuartz is installed on /opt/X11 , so we do:

cd <extracted-folder>/unix
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk \
--with-tcl=/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk/lib --with-x \
--x-includes=/opt/X11/include --x-libraries=/opt/X11/lib  
make
make install  

xschem compilation

Besides referencing the X libraries, we need to also point to the Tcl/Tk installation path. Let's use a recent xschem repository and install it on ~/xschem-macos (adapt this to your username):

git clone https://github.com/StefanSchippers/xschem.git  
cd xschem  
./configure --prefix=/Users/$(whoami)/xschem-macos

Before building the application, we need to adjust Makefile.conf because the current configure script doesn't support custom flags. So we need to replace the CFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables in that file as below:

CFLAGS=-I/opt/X11/include -I/opt/X11/include/cairo \
-I/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk/include -O2
LDFLAGS=-L/opt/X11/lib -L/usr/local/opt/tcl-tk/lib -lm -lcairo \
-lX11 -lXrender -lxcb -lxcb-render -lX11-xcb -lXpm -ltcl8.6 -ltk8.6

Finally, we compile and install the application.

make
make install

The application will be placed in /Users/$(whoami)/xschem-macos/bin and can be started with ./xschem in that folder.