Building for macOS

Minimum macOS and Xcode Versions

macOS Yosemite (10.10) or newer is required to build Dolphin.

You will need to install "Command Line Tools for Xcode". Installing Xcode itself is optional if you have installed the Command Line Tools.

Checkout and Compile Dolphin

To checkout Dolphin's source:

git clone https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin ~/dolphin-emu
cd ~/dolphin-emu

To build with CMake (optionally verbose): Download and install CMake if you don't have it.

Then:

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make

CMake Notes

The -j option can be passed to make in order to compile multiple objects at once. A good rule of thumb is number of CPU cores plus one. For example, on a quad core CPU make -j5 would be a good choice.

You can execute cmake -L to view the options that Dolphin's CMake environment supports, as well as their current and possible settings.

If you have any problems compiling, use the verbose option (make VERBOSE=1) to give more detail. If you report a problem, at a minimum include the last screen-full of lines.

Optional: Ninja

Ninja is a replacement for Make which is a bit faster for a Dolphin-sized project and is worth considering if you intend to rebuild frequently.

After installing it, pass -G Ninja to CMake and use 'ninja' instead of 'make' (note that ninja is -j by default).

By default, Clang won't show color diagnostics when not invoked from a TTY, and Ninja buffers compiler output through a pipe to avoid interleaving issues. To fix this, pass to CMake:

-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-Xclang -fcolor-diagnostics"

Keeping Up to Date

All you need to do to update to the latest Dolphin revision is the following:

cd ~/dolphin-emu/build
git pull
make && open Binaries/*