electrum/contrib/osx

Building Mac OS binaries

This guide explains how to build Electrum binaries for macOS systems.

1. Building the binary

This needs to be done on a system running macOS or OS X. We use El Capitan (10.11.6) as building it on High Sierra (or later) makes the binaries incompatible with older versions.

Before starting, make sure that the Xcode command line tools are installed (e.g. you have git).

1.1a Get Xcode

Building the QR scanner (CalinsQRReader) requires full Xcode (not just command line tools).

The last Xcode version compatible with El Capitan is Xcode 8.2.1

Get it from here.

Unfortunately, you need an "Apple ID" account.

After downloading, uncompress it.

Make sure it is the "selected" xcode (e.g.):

sudo xcode-select -s $HOME/Downloads/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/

1.1b Build QR scanner separately on newer Mac

Alternatively, you can try building just the QR scanner on newer macOS.

On newer Mac, run:

pushd contrib/osx/CalinsQRReader; xcodebuild; popd
cp -r contrib/osx/CalinsQRReader/build prebuilt_qr

Move prebuilt_qr to El Capitan: contrib/osx/CalinsQRReader/prebuilt_qr.

1.2 Build Electrum

cd electrum
./contrib/osx/make_osx

This creates both a folder named Electrum.app and the .dmg file.

2. Building the image deterministically (WIP)

The usual way to distribute macOS applications is to use image files containing the application. Although these images can be created on a Mac with the built-in hdiutil, they are not deterministic.

Instead, we use the toolchain that Bitcoin uses: genisoimage and libdmg-hfsplus. These tools do not work on macOS, so you need a separate Linux machine (or VM).

Copy the Electrum.app directory over and install the dependencies, e.g.:

apt install libcap-dev cmake make gcc faketime

Then you can just invoke package.sh with the path to the app:

cd electrum
./contrib/osx/package.sh ~/Electrum.app/