Mac OS X build instructions

The Mac OS X port is not yet completed. These instructions are here for those who wish to help out.

Prerequisites on Mac OS X

• Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) or 10.5.x (Leopard) running on Intel hardware (PowerPC hardware is not supported).

• Xcode 2.4.1 or later (​http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/).

• Some things from MacPorts (​http://www.macports.org/).

After installing MacPorts, do not forget to add the following two lines to your ~/.profile

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH

Then perform the following command (see caveat in the next section):

sudo port install i386-elf-gcc libidl doxygen

Doxygen is optional.

Note that as of time of writing, i386-elf-gcc will not build on Leopard. As a workaround issue sudo mv /usr/include/iconv.h /usr/include/iconv.h.tmp before installing i386-elf-gcc and rename back the file after installing the compiler. If you run into the iconv build error, you need to issue sudo port clean --work i386-elf-gcc , rename the header and install i386-elf-gcc again.

• SDL 1.2.12 or later 1.2.x release.
  ​http://libsdl.org/download-1.2.php

• Qt/Mac 3.3.8 (optional).
  Add --disable-qt as argument to configure if missing.

Building VirtualBox

1. Change to the root directory of the sources and execute the configure script:

   ./configure --disable-qt
   

   If it finds everything it needs, it will create a file called 'AutoConfig.kmk' containing paths to the various tools on your system. Also, it will create an environment setup script called env.sh. This step only has to be done once (if something changes in your build tool setup, you might have to repeat it but keep in mind that both output files will be overwritten).
2. Whenever you want to build VirtualBox, you have to open a shell and source the generated environment setup script 'env.sh', i.e. do

   . ./env.sh
   

When building on Leopard (10.5), create a file called LocalConfig.kmk containing

VBOX_TARGET_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_5=1

1. To build type

   kmk
   

   The default is to a release build, should you wish to do a debug or profile build add BUILD_TYPE=debug or BUILD_TYPE=profile as argument to kmk or export it as an environment variable in your shell.

Running VirtualBox

As mentioned elsewhere, the Mac OS X port of VirtualBox is work in progress. Things might therefore not work as expected and break at random times.

1. Load the kernel extension module. This can be found in out/darwin.x86/release/dist along with a small script (load.sh) to load it. Execute and make sure the module loads successfully. If for some reason, you want to run VirtualBox without the module, this is how it works (be warned, it will be extremely slow):

   export VBOX_SUPLIB_FAKE="fake"
   

2. Enter out/darwin.x86/release/dist/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/.
3. Run ./VBoxBFE -m 32

If you have a knoppix ISO or similar hanging around, you can try start it like this:

./VBoxBFE -m 128 -cdrom /Users/name/Desktop/knoppix-3.7.iso -boot d -natdev1 080286000042