Dealing with Tetrad on a Mac: Security Issues

In recent Mac OS's, there are some security blocks put up that prevent Java jars from launching as expected or prevent saving and loading of files from anywhere except the user directory (/usr/[your username]). This only happens if you try to launch Tetrad by double clicking on the jar. Hopefully these can be solved in the future, but for now there is one important workaround that solves the issues entirely:

• Do not open Tetrad by double clicking the jar or right clicking and selecting Open With.

• Instead open a Terminal window and, after installing Java and downloading the Tetrad launch jar, change to the directory that the Tetrad jar is in:

cd Downloads

Then list the Tetrad jar files in that directory:

ls tetrad*

find the jar you want to use and type:

java -jar [name of Tetrad launch file]-launch.jar

E.g.:

java -jar tetrad-gui-7.2.0-launch.jar

You can use tab complete on the name so it's not difficult. (For tab complete, type the first few letters of the filename and press the tab key and it will complete the name. You may need to help it out with additional letters or numbers if you have multiple files with similar names--just type the next letter and press tab again, etc., until you get the entire name.)

This should work on Windows and Linux as well, although the Java launch jar will be in a directory by another name, and the "ls" command for Windows will be a "dir" command.