====== Setting up a Development Environment for Mac OS X ======

Welcome to developing with Orx on the Mac OS X operating system. These instructions will help you install the tools you need in order to work and develop with Orx on your system.

This guide has been prepared on a fresh installation of High Sierra in order to cover all the very basic requirements.

{{ tutorials:orx:mac:fresh-desktop.jpg |}}

The setup is very simple, and contrary to popular belief, the Xcode IDE is not required. 

There are three tools that will be installed. These are:

  - GCC compiler
  - GIT command
  - One MacOSX SDK

And the nice thing is, all of the above will be installed in one go via the //Xcode Commandline Developer Tools//. Let's do this now.

{{ tutorials:orx:mac:gcc-command-prompt-for-commandline-tools.jpg |}}

  - Open a Terminal 
  - Type ''gcc''

You will not have ''gcc'' on your system, but Mac OSX has stubs on the system that catch this command and a prompt will appear allowing you to download the //Xcode Commandline Developer Tools//. 

<WRAP center round tip 80%>
Please note: Do not click the ''Get Xcode'' button. That would download the entire Xcode. Instead, just click the ''Install'' button.
</WRAP>


The download will begin. Should be around a 45MB download, which is quite reasonable:

{{ tutorials:orx:mac:commandline-tools-downloading.jpg |}}

Once download completes, the following prompt appears:

{{ tutorials:orx:mac:commandline-tools-download-complete.jpg |}}

Now you can explore what you have just downloaded. Use finder, and visit the following location:

''MacintoshHD / Library / Developer / CommandLineTools''

{{ tutorials:orx:mac:commandline-tools-sdk-folder-location.jpg |}}

In the ''SDKs'' folder is (as you'd imagine) the SDK that the tools installed. The ''CommandLineTools/usr'' folder contains the gcc compiler tools as well as ''git'' plus many other tools we don't need to cover.

And that's it. Your Mac system is ready to start developing with Orx.

The [[en:tutorials:orx:mac:cloning_and_building_orx_on_mac|next article]] will cover using ''git'' to download the Orx library, and then how to compile it using the gcc compiler against the MacOSX SDK.