Your Macintosh already comes preinstalled with the most common UNIX software packages. However because macOS is targeted for the general audience, scientific software is mostly missing. If you need additional software, please leave me a note.

All of this will be installed in the /opt/local directory tree, so make sure to have /opt/local/bin and /opt/local/sbin in your PATH environment variable. Some packages, like perl and python for example, which are installed to satisfy dependencies of the extra software, replicate software which already come with the operating system. To make sure you are using the correct version, either use an absolute pathname in your scripts (preferred method), or prepend /opt/local/bin to PATH.

Examples:

  • To be able to use the scipy python package, you must run /opt/local/bin/python, and not the default /usr/bin/python.

  • To access the Perl Data Language, you must run /opt/local/bin/perl, and not /usr/bin/perl.

The full list of all packages can be obtained with the command /opt/local/bin/port installed.