Development Guide¶

This compilation guide will teach you how to build RetroArch for macOS/OSX.

The following versions of the operating system are supported:

OSX 10.5 (Leopard)
OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
OSX 10.7 (Lion)
OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion)
OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)
OSX 10.10 (Yosemite)
OSX 10.11 (El Capitan)
macOS 10.12 (Sierra)
macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
macOS 10.14 (Mojave)
macOS 10.15 (Catalina)
macOS 11 (Big Sur)
macOS 12 (Monterey)
macOS 13 (Ventura)

RetroArch can work on:

32bit PPC processor-powered Macs
64bit PPC processor-powered Macs
32bit Intel processor-powered Macs
64bit Intel processor-powered Macs
64bit ARM processor-powered Macs

This video covers a quick demonstration of these subjects;

Environment Configuration
Fetching the code
Building RetroArch
(Optional) Building the cores

Be sure to read instructions that are given on this page.

Environment configuration¶

The following software needs to be installed:

Xcode (macOS only)

You can get Xcode from the App Store. If you have never used Xcode before, you will need to open the Xcode preferences, and in Accounts, log in with your Apple ID.

Fetching the code¶

libretro-super¶

The recommended way of fetching RetroArch source code, as well as the source code for all of the cores, is to use libretro-super.

To get libretro-super, run:

git clone https://github.com/libretro/libretro-super.git libretro-super
cd libretro-super

Now you can run the following command to download the source for RetroArch:

./libretro-fetch.sh --retroarch

You can run the following command to download the source for RetroArch as well as all of the cores:

./libretro-fetch.sh

Or specify just the cores that you want:

./libretro-fetch.sh snes9x2010 fceumm

RetroArch repo¶

If you choose not to use libretro-super, you can clone RetroArch's repository from GitHub

git clone https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch.git retroarch
cd retroarch

Note

Versions of git available for OSX PowerPC might not come with the necessary SSL/TLS support that Github now requires. If you happen to find that you can not clone or pull from Github, perform the following command: git config --global http.sslVerify false.

For subsequent builds you only need to pull the changes from the repo

cd retroarch
git pull

To update your local copy from the repository run git pull

RetroArch Compilation¶

There are several Xcode projects and workspaces in the pkg/apple directory in RetroArch, to choose from based on your needs:

Xcode Project/Workspace File Name	OS support	Purpose
`RetroArch.xcworkspace`	10.13+	The primary workspace for the latest Metal build. Most active development happens here.
`RetroArch.xcodeproj`	10.6+	The current non-Metal build.
`RetroArch_PPC.xcodeproj`	10.5+	Building for PowerPC processor-powered Macs.
`RetroArch_Metal.xcodeproj`	10.13+	The project for the latest Metal build. You can use this directly but typically it's preferred to use the Workspace.
`RetroArch_OSX107.xcodeproj`	10.7+	An old development line that is no longer in use.

Building RetroArch separately¶

Open Xcode. Open your chosen project file in the Xcode IDE and build (⌘-B) and run (⌘-R) it there.

Core Compilation¶

The easiest way to build all the cores is to use libretro-super.

To build all cores for OSX, run

./libretro-build.sh

In case you only want to build one and/or more cores instead of all, you can specify the cores you want to build after the first command in no particular order. E.g.:

./libretro-build.sh snes9x2010 fceumm

Once finished, you can find the libretro cores inside directory dist/osx.