[esp-r] Re: Compiling on MacOS 26.5+

Wed Aug 12 17:59:50 BST 2026

Yes, thanks, Daniel!

The documentation does not seem to be dated but refers to v17, so is probably from 2023 or 2024. Since the new numbering scheme (from 11, 12 … to 25, 26 …) MacOS has significantly changed in the background. Using gcc at 11 does not work without additional tricks as interaction with the current Xcode will give trouble. It would be interesting if any of the mentioned students kept (detailed) book of the installation on a current machine with MacOS 26.x.

I am highly sceptical if it will work, anyway, without the described changes to Install, simply due to the locations of e.g. xml2 and xslt. At least on my machines (one work, one private) addition of the “specific” locations was necessary (albeit the same on both due to ‘brew’).

Anyway, there are additional issues and I am not sure that I will find the motivation to document my process for “getting it to run” (as also mentioned, for me it currently works only up to version 17 with X, version 18 refuses to connect to XQuartz). My general take is that Linux seems to be much more lenient in following strict syntax rules (apart from the sloppy typing of functions which the approach by Gian Luca works around I had quite a struggle with text mode prj when not in the cfg folder which required code changes, as well - either nobody really tested this or as stated Linux is much more lenient).

Best
Achim

> On 12 Aug 2026, at 12:11, Gian Luca Brunetti <gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it> wrote:
> 
> Thank you very much Daniel!
> Best 
> Gian Luca
> 
> 
> Gian Luca Brunetti
> Associate Professor
> Arch. PhD
> Politecnico di Milano
> DAStU - Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani / Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
> via Bonardi 3, edificio 12 / building 12
> 20133 Milano
> tel. (+39) 02 2399 5750
> cell. (+39) 3358040808
> email: gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it
> 
> From: Daniel Costola <daniel.costola at strath.ac.uk>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2026 11:34 AM
> To: Gian Luca Brunetti <gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it>; achim.geissler <achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch>; esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk <esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [esp-r] Re: Compiling on MacOS 26.5+
>  
> Dear Achim and Gian Luca,
> 
> Instructions to compile ESP-r on MacOS were updated in the documentation last year for version 13.3.18:
> https://appdocs.esru.strath.ac.uk/books/introduction-to-esp-r/page/macos-compile-from-source-on-apple-silicon-processors
> 
> I am not a MacOS user myself, but the instructions were checked by a few MSc students and seem to work. 
> 
> Please you feel free to amend them on the appdocs platform as you see fit.
> 
> Thank you in advance
> Daniel 
> 
> 
> 
> From: esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk <esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk> on behalf of Gian Luca Brunetti <gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it>
> Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2026 20:12
> To: achim.geissler <achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch>; esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk <esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk>; Joe Clarke <joe at esru.strath.ac.uk>
> Subject: [esp-r] Re: Compiling on MacOS 26.5+
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> thank you Professor Clarke for correcting update_notes.txt. 
> 
> Achim, good to know that the -std=gnu17 workaround also works with 13.3.17 on your M2 Mac.
> 
> On Ubuntu, after forcing GNU C17, the X11 part compiled and ESP-r installed successfully. I did not encounter the additional issues you are seeing with 13.3.18 on macOS.
> 
> Thanks also for sharing the Mac-specific changes to Install.
> 
> Best
> Gian Luca
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gian Luca Brunetti
> Politecnico di Milano
> DAStU- Department of Architecture and Urban Studies / Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani
> via Bonardi 3, building 12
> 20133 Milano
> tel. (+39) 02 2399 5750
> cell. (+39) 335 8040808
> email: gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it
> From: achim.geissler <achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch>
> Sent: Sunday, August 9, 2026 4:02 PM
> To: Gian Luca Brunetti <gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it>; esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk <esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [esp-r] Compiling on MacOS 26.5+
>  
> Hi Gian Luca,
> 
> your fix works fine for V13.3.17 on MacOS 26.6 (M2) using (brew installed) gcc-16 which seems to correspond to MacOSX26.sdk (-std=gnu17 does not cause an issue). X is fired up as expected (I haven’t run any test on actual functionality, yet, though).
> 
> On MacOS, I need some additional changes to ‘Install' due to the non-editable /usr/ directory on macs (line-numbers refer to modified Install), given here for anybody interested (I use brew for any “Linux” packages):
> 
> Approx. line 340 ff:
>    else
>     xml_libs_found="yes"
>     if [ "$machine" = "arm64" ]; then
>         LIBXML2_INCLUDE="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/libxml2/include/libxml2 -I/opt/homebrew/opt/libxslt/include/libxslt"
>     else
>         LIBXML2_INCLUDE="-I/usr/include -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/local/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include/libxslt -I/local/include/libxslt"
>     fi
> 
> Approx. line 804 ff:
> case $platform in
>   mac)
>       localinclude="-I/opt/homebrew/include"
>       ;;
>   *)  localinclude="-I/usr/local/include" ;;
> esac
> 
> LOCAL_INCLUDES="-I../include -I../shocc ${localinclude} -I../cetc/h3kreports"
> 
> Sadly it seems that between V.17 and V.18 changes in the X code break the X-connection for MacOS. During compile, for V.18 the header file mntext.h and others are missing. I found these in package 'brew install emscripten’ (compiler toolchain to WebAssembly) which makes 'mntext.h’, 'bits/alltypes.h' and 'bits/dirent.h’ available. No idea what this is actually necessary for in ESP-r.
> 
> For what its worth.
> 
> Best
> Achim
> 
> 
> On 8 Aug 2026, at 23:18, Gian Luca Brunetti <gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it> wrote:
> 
> Hi Achim,
> I have just encountered a different issue with 13.3.18 on a current Ubuntu system, so I thought I would mention it here in case it is useful to others.
> In my case, the installation stopped while building the X11 part of ESP-r, in esru_x.c. With a recent GCC, some old-style C declarations, for example
> extern gnwkquery_();
> are interpreted differently, which led to errors such as “too many arguments to function”, together with a conflicting declaration of getenv().
> I was able to get past this by compiling the C code using GNU C17 semantics, adding
> -std=gnu17
> to the CFLAGS used by the installer.
> The patch I used was:
> sed -i '/GNU).*CFLAGS=/ s|";;| -std=gnu17 -Wno-error=implicit-int -Wno-error=implicit-function-declaration";;|' Install
> This is a different issue from the update_notes.txt problem you describe, but the workaround might still be worth sharing.
> For completeness: I used ChatGPT to formulate the workaround.
> Best
> Gian Luca
> 
> 
> Gian Luca Brunetti
> Associate Professor
> Arch. PhD
> Politecnico di Milano
> DAStU - Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani / Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
> via Bonardi 3, edificio 12 / building 12
> 20133 Milano
> tel. (+39) 02 2399 5750
> cell. (+39) 3358040808
> email: gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it <mailto:gianluca.brunetti at polimi.it> 
> From: esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk <mailto:esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk> <esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk <mailto:esp-r-bounces at lists.strath.ac.uk>> on behalf of achim.geissler <achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch <mailto:achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch>>
> Sent: Monday, August 3, 2026 9:08 AM
> To: esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk <mailto:esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk> <esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk <mailto:esp-r at lists.strath.ac.uk>>
> Subject: [esp-r] Compiling on MacOS 26.5+
>  
> Hi all,
> 
> after some time, I wanted to update my ESP-r version on my M2 Mac w/ MacOS 26.5 (soon .6) to the current latest, 13.3.18 from May 2025.
> 
> Compiling was possible after quite a struggle, however, there seems to be a problem with the “update_notes.txt” which is downloaded at startup to check if the most recent version is installed. As far as I could see, an (MacOS) “EOF” or similar is inserted prior to the 13.3.18 changes listing and this leads to an error "EMENU: EOF detected, error in input command.” which itself possibly makes firing up of X broken.
> 
> Who - currently - is managing the ESP-r code? I would be interested in getting the 13.3.17 archive (my latest successful installation was 13.3.16) to make sure there is no gap in my source tree.
> 
> Also, it would be nice if somebody at ESRU could check the current “update_notes.txt” and make sure no undesired characters inadvertently made their way into it.
> 
> Thanks.
> Best
> Achim
> 
> achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch <mailto:achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch>
> 
> 
> achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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achim.geissler at acatalepsy.ch

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