A few hints: If you just want to build matplotlib for your own computer (and don't care about making an installer that will work on anybody else's) then you can install from source with very little trouble: - You may want to edit setupext.py to limit searching to those dirs that really matter, but this is only needed if you have installed extras that might conflict. - You may want to edit setup.cfg to select a better default back end. You have to be much more careful if you want to build a binary installer that can be used by others. I've found that bdist_mpkg works, and I've found it is safest to build on the oldest platform I want the installer to support (for example /usr/X11/lib moved in 10.8 or 10.7 in a way that is forward but not backwards compatible). For Apple's python you need install anything; all you need is in /usr/lib and /usr/X11/lib. I have no idea if TkAgg works well. For python.org python you should install a version of Tcl/Tk. I suggest ActiveState Tcl/Tk 8.5.11. Be warned that versions 8.5.12, 8.5.12.1, 8.5.13 all have known crashing problems; I have not tried 8.5.14 (which came out fairly recently) as 8.5.11 seems to do well enough. I've cannot comment on building matplotlib for macports, fink or homebrew. -- Russell In article <520...@st...>, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote: > We actually discussed this very issue yesterday in our Google hangout > about continuous integration. We're probably going to need to script a > full setup from a clean Mac + XCode to a working matplotlib development > environment in order to make that happen, and obviously that will be > shared with the world. Things are even more complex on Windows, and I'd > like to do that there, too. So stay tuned. > > Mike > > On 08/16/2013 10:02 AM, Paul Hobson wrote: > > Mike, > > > > That's great news. Is there any chance we can look forward to > > "official" instructions for setting up a Mac to develop matplotlib? > > > > I gave up a long time ago and started piecing to together my meager > > PRs in a linux VM. > > -paul > > > > > > On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Michael Droettboom > > <md...@st... > > <mailto:md...@st...>> wrote: > > > > Thanks to the gracious donation from Hans Petter Langtangen and the > > Center for Biomedical Computing at Simula > > (http://home.simula.no/~hpl <http://home.simula.no/%7Ehpl>), > > I now have a new Mac Mini sitting at my desk. This should allow me to > > keep on top of changes that affect the Mac builds and to better track > > down Mac-only issues. > > > > Stay tuned over the next few weeks and months as we will most > > likely be > > using some more of these funds to pay for hosted continuous > > integration > > services (as discussed yesterday in our MEP19 Google Hangout). > > > > Cheers, > > Mike