Building from source on Mac

Note

These instructions have been tested on macOS 11.1.

Install Apple Developer Tools. An easy way to do this is to open a terminal window, enter the command

xcode-select --install

and follow the prompts. Apple Developer Tools includes git, the software we need to download and manage the SciPy source code.

We recommend using conda to set up your environment on a Mac, as this will also allow you to install all necessary dependencies in a conda environment, instead of manually.

Installing without using conda

Apple ships its own version of Python with OS X. However, we strongly recommend installing the official Python distribution.

Alternatively, use Python from one of the OS X package managers (Homebrew, MacPorts, Fink).

Compilers (C/C++/FORTRAN/Cython/Pythran)

Though virtually any C/C++ compiler may be used with SciPy, on macOS we recommend using the default Clang C/C++ compiler. It can be installed as an Xcode command line tool (this is what the xcode-select command given higher up has already done).

The only thing missing is a Fortran compiler. We recommend you use gfortran, and install it with Homebrew.

BLAS/LAPACK Installation

You will also need to install a library providing the BLAS and LAPACK interfaces. OpenBLAS, ATLAS and MKL all work. OpenBLAS can be installed via Homebrew, and is the library we recommend using.

Note

As of SciPy >=1.2.0, we do not support compiling against the system Accelerate library for BLAS and LAPACK. It does not support a sufficiently recent LAPACK interface.