Building OpenROAD on a MacBook M1 macOS Tahoe using homebrew.

[stefanottili]

I've been building OR with using homebrew ever since I got a MacBook M1 in Dec 2021.

Over the last four years I've only heard of a couple other users to attempt to use a Mac and I believe they gave up.
brew upgrade frequently updated packages to versions that broke the build for periods of time.
Issues with other packages, notably fmt/spdlog/or-tools/lemon, disappeared over the years.

Here's the Dec 2025 list of changes that allow me to build OR on MacBook M1/homebrew.
These might not be the "right way of doing things", but they "work for me".

The etc/DependenyInstaller.sh doesn't install everything, a couple of packages have to be installed manually.

[email protected] doesn't work for OR, I had to find/install swig using a 4.2.1 formula and pin it.
OR doesn't compile with the default tcl-tk@9, use brew install tcl-tk@8.
You also need qt@5

~/.zshrc

export CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/include"
export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(brew --prefix or-tools)
export PATH=/opt/homebrew/opt/qt@5/bin:$PATH
export PATH="$(brew --prefix bison)/bin:$(brew --prefix flex)/bin:$(brew --prefix tcl-tk@8)/bin:${PATH}"

let cmake find tcl-tk@8 lib

diff --git a/cmake/FindTCL.cmake b/cmake/FindTCL.cmake
index a76cf37a46..cf7aadd0b9 100644
--- a/cmake/FindTCL.cmake
+++ b/cmake/FindTCL.cmake
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ set(TCL_POSSIBLE_NAMES tcl87 tcl8.7
 if (NOT TCL_LIB_PATHS)
   if (CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME STREQUAL "Darwin")
     set(TCL_LIB_PATHS /usr/local/lib
+      /opt/homebrew/opt/tcl-tk@8/lib
       /opt/homebrew/opt/tcl-tk/lib
       /usr/local/opt/tcl-tk/lib
       )

brew install xxx these three packages manually and add cmake link_directories.
-D_GNU_SOURCE is needed, it's also set somewhere, but doesn't take on Mac M1.

diff --git a/src/CMakeLists.txt b/src/CMakeLists.txt
index 0909cc0c19..433367c751 100755
--- a/src/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -162,7 +162,12 @@ if (NOT ALLOW_WARNINGS)
   )
 endif()
 
+link_directories(/opt/homebrew/opt/zstd/lib)
+link_directories(/opt/homebrew/opt/icu4c/lib)
+link_directories(/opt/homebrew/opt/yaml-cpp/lib)
+
 add_compile_options(
+  -D_GNU_SOURCE
   -Wall
   -Wmissing-field-initializers
   -Wredundant-decls

[email protected] doens't have Boost::system any more, but it's also not needed for dst.

diff --git a/src/dst/CMakeLists.txt b/src/dst/CMakeLists.txt
index ec003656c2..839896609f 100644
--- a/src/dst/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/dst/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ project(dst
   LANGUAGES CXX
 )
-find_package(Boost CONFIG REQUIRED COMPONENTS serialization system thread)
+find_package(Boost CONFIG REQUIRED COMPONENTS serialization thread)
 swig_lib(NAME      dst
          NAMESPACE dst
          I_FILE    src/Distributed.i
@@ -36,7 +36,6 @@ target_link_libraries(dst_lib
     ${TCL_LIBRARY}
     ${ZLIB_LIBRARIES}
     Boost::serialization
-    Boost::system
     Boost::thread
 )

[maliberty]

Are those the only deltas required? It wouldn't be hard to add them to cmake.

Have you tried bazel?

[stefanottili]

bazel build -c opt //:openroad

fails to compile external/org_gnu_readline and then every single xxx/swig.cc with the same _GNU_SOURCE issue that plagues the cmake build. bazel is an even bigger mystery to me then cmake ...

I hope that bazel clean --expunge clean's up after itself, but I'm not even sure of that.

external/org_gnu_readline/bind.c:873:2: error: call to undeclared function 'close'; ISO C99 and later do not support implicit function declarations [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
  873 |         close (file);

ERROR: OpenROAD-flow-scripts/tools/OpenROAD/src/ant/BUILD:44:11: Compiling src/ant/swig.cc failed: (Exit 1): cc_wrapper.sh failed: error executing CppCompile command (from target //src/ant:ui) external/toolchains_llvm++llvm+llvm_toolchain/bin/cc_wrapper.sh -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE '--target=aarch64-apple-macosx' -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -fstack-protector -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fcolor-diagnostics -Wall ... (remaining 980 arguments skipped)

Use --sandbox_debug to see verbose messages from the sandbox and retain the sandbox build root for debugging
In file included from bazel-out/darwin_arm64-opt/bin/src/ant/swig.cc:1829:
In file included from external/boost.stacktrace+/include/boost/stacktrace.hpp:15:
In file included from external/boost.stacktrace+/include/boost/stacktrace/frame.hpp:38:
In file included from external/boost.stacktrace+/include/boost/stacktrace/safe_dump_to.hpp:217:
external/boost.stacktrace+/include/boost/stacktrace/detail/collect_unwind.ipp:33:2: error: "Boost.Stacktrace requires `_Unwind_Backtrace` function. Define `_GNU_SOURCE` macro or `BOOST_STACKTRACE_GNU_SOURCE_NOT_REQUIRED` if _Unwind_Backtrace is available without `_GNU_SOURCE`."
   33 | #error "Boost.Stacktrace requires `_Unwind_Backtrace` function. Define `_GNU_SOURCE` macro or `BOOST_STACKTRACE_GNU_SOURCE_NOT_REQUIRED` if _Unwind_Backtrace is available without `_GNU_SOURCE`."
      |  ^
1 error generated.

[maliberty]

@QuantamHD @calewis any ideas on the above?

[maliberty]

How does removing system from dst work? It is used throughout the code.

[maliberty]

nvm, I see it was switched to header only