macOS Development Environment

The current macOS pull-request build is defined in .github/workflows/ci-macos.yml. Use that workflow as the source of truth when checking platform-specific dependencies or flags.

At the time of this note, the job uses macos-latest, Homebrew, PostgreSQL 17, and clang through ccache. It builds the topology, SFCGAL, and protobuf paths, but disables raster, GUI, and interrupt tests:

brew update
brew install \
  autoconf automake libtool pkg-config \
  ccache \
  gdal geos icu4c json-c libpq libxml2 \
  proj protobuf-c sfcgal cunit \
  docbook docbook-xsl \
  postgresql@17 gettext
brew link --force gettext

The workflow exports Homebrew include and library paths before configuring:

export HOMEBREW_PREFIX=/opt/homebrew
export PATH="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/postgresql@17/bin:${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/bin:${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/sbin:${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/ccache/libexec:${PATH}"
export PGCONFIG="${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/postgresql@17/bin/pg_config"
export CFLAGS="-I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/gettext/include -I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/postgresql@17/include -I${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/include -Wno-nullability-completeness"
export LDFLAGS="-L${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/gettext/lib -L${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/opt/postgresql@17/lib"
export CXXFLAGS="-std=c++17"
export CC="ccache clang"
export CXX="ccache clang++"

Then it runs:

./autogen.sh
./configure \
  --without-gui \
  --without-interrupt-tests \
  --with-topology \
  --without-raster \
  --with-sfcgal \
  --with-protobuf \
  --with-pgconfig="${PGCONFIG}"

brew services start postgresql@17
make -j"$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu)"
sudo make install
make -j"$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu)" check RUNTESTFLAGS="-v --extension --dumprestore"
brew services stop postgresql@17

If local behavior differs from CI, first compare the local Homebrew package versions, HOMEBREW_PREFIX, PostgreSQL major version, and configure flags against .github/workflows/ci-macos.yml.