# Prefered method of compiling on MacOS?

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/prefered-method-of-compiling-on-macos/4054
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [April 13, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/prefered-method-of-compiling-on-macos/4054 "2020-04-13T17:07:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@wsherman](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/wsherman)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/prefered-method-of-compiling-on-macos/4054/1 "2020-04-13T17:07:08Z")

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Hello ParaView developers,

In other threads, we’ve had discussions about the OpenVR plugin on MacOS, and I’d like to give that a try myself, which means compiling on my MacBookPro.

So my question is: what’s the best method of compiling on a MacOS system? Do I have to have a particular development system installed?

I admit I haven’t tried yet, I’d to avoid obvious mistakes that others already know how to avoid. Maybe the answer is simply to run CMake, but I fear compiling things on Mac’s aren’t as simple as that.

Thanks in advance for your advice,  
Bill

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### Author: ![Kenneth\_Moreland](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/kenneth_moreland/32/15033_2.png) [@Kenneth\_Moreland](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Kenneth_Moreland)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 5:28pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/prefered-method-of-compiling-on-macos/4054/2 "2020-04-13T17:28:18Z")

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I’m not sure this is the answer to your question, but whatever method you use, I recommend using the compilers provided by Xcode. You should be able to use CMake to create an Xcode project if you want to use the IDE. However, I personally install the Xcode command line tools and instruct CMake to generate a build for that. My personal preference is to generate for the [Ninja build tool](https://ninja-build.org/), but generating for Unix Makefiles works fine, too.

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/prefered-method-of-compiling-on-macos/4054/3 "2020-04-13T17:45:37Z")

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+1 to what Ken said. I don’t recommend using the Xcode generator unless you need iDevice support (which is the only way CMake can build for those platforms AFAIK).