Installation on macOS¶

On the Mac, you can install NEST either via Homebrew or manually. If you want to use PyNEST, you need to have a version of Python with some science packages installed, see the section Python on Mac for details.

Installation via Homebrew¶

The easiest way to install NEST on a Mac is to install it via the Homebrew package manager:

To install homebrew, follow the instructions at brew.sh
Then, in a terminal
- Add the homebrew/science tap by running:
  brew tap brewsci/science
- For information on what options NEST has and what will be installed, run:
  brew info nest
- To install nest, execute
  brew install nest

Options have to be appended, so for example, to install NEST with PyNEST run:

brew install nest --with-python

This will install the most recent release version of NEST. To build NEST from the most recent sources on Github, use:

brew install nest --HEAD

Manual installation¶

The clang/clang++ compiler that ships with OS X/macOS does not support OpenMP threads and creates code that fails some tests. You therefore need to use GCC to compile NEST under OS X/macOS.

Installation instructions here have been tested under OS X 10.11 El Capitan and macOS 10.12 Sierra with Anaconda Python 2 and 3 and all other dependencies installed via Homebrew. See below for Manual installation with dependencies from MacPorts.

Install Xcode from the AppStore.
Install the Xcode command line tools by executing the following line in the terminal and following the instructions in the windows that will pop up:

xcode-select --install

Install dependencies via Homebrew:

brew install gcc cmake gsl open-mpi libtool

Create a directory for building and installing NEST (you should always build NEST outside the source code directory; installing NEST in a “place of its own” makes it easy to remove NEST later).
Extract the NEST tarball as a subdirectory in that directory or clone NEST from GitHub into a subdirectory:

mkdir NEST       # directory for all NEST stuff
cd NEST
tar zxf nest-simulator-x.y.z.tar.gz
mkdir bld
cd bld

Configure and build NEST inside the build directory:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=</install/path> \
      -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-6 \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-6 \
      </path/to/NEST/src>

make -j4         # -j4 builds in parallel using 4 processes
make install
make installcheck

To compile NEST with MPI support, add -Dwith-mpi=ON as cmake option.

Manual installation with dependencies from MacPorts¶

The following should work if you install dependencies using MacPorts (only steps that differ from the instructions above are shown):

Install dependencies via MacPorts:

sudo port install gcc6 cmake gsl openmpi-default libtool \
python27 py27-cython py27-nose doxygen

Configure and build NEST inside the build directory

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=</install/path> \
      -DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/opt/local/lib/libpython2.7.dylib \
      -DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7 \
      -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/opt/local/bin/gcc-mp-6 \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/opt/local/bin/g++-mp-6 \
      </path/to/NEST/src>

make -j4         # -j4 builds in parallel using 4 processes
make install
make installcheck

To compile NEST with MPI support, add -Dwith-mpi=ON as cmake option.

Python on Mac¶

The version of Python shipping with OS X/macOS is rather dated and does not include key packages such as NumPy. Therefore, you need to install Python via a channel that provides scientific packages.

One well-tested source is the Anaconda Python distribution for both Python 2 and 3. If you do not want to install the full Anaconda distribution, you can also install Miniconda and then install the packages needed by NEST by running:

conda install numpy scipy matplotlib ipython cython nose

Alternatively, you should be able to install the necessary Python packages via Homebrew, but this has not been tested.