MacOS

There are two main "package managers" used on MacOS: Homebrew and MacPorts. Trunk Recorder can be installed with dependencies from one or the other.

Trunk Recorder uses ffmpeg for concluded call audio processing, including WAV concatenation, optional filtering/normalization, and optional M4A creation.

Using Homebrew

Tested on macOS Sequoia 15.5 with the following packages:

• homebrew 4.5.3
• cmake 4.0.2
• gnuradio 3.10.12.0_1
• uhd 4.8.0.0_1
• pkgconfig 2.4.3
• cppunit 1.15.1
• openssl 3.5.0
• ffmpeg 7.x
• pybind11 2.13.6_1
• six 1.17.0

Install Homebrew

See the Brew homepage for more information.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Installing using the Trunk Recorder Tap

Trunk Recorder can be installed easily by adding the repository to homebrew. More information can be found on this github repo. Install can be done easily with the following commands.

brew tap trunkrecorder/install
brew install trunk-recorder

If you prefer to install packages individually or without adding the repository, it can be done using the instructions below.

Install GNURadio and other dependencies

brew install gnuradio uhd cmake pkgconfig cppunit openssl ffmpeg pybind11 six

Install the OsmoSDR Package for GNURadio

See the gr-osmosdr homepage for more information.

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr
cd gr-osmosdr
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j
sudo make install
sudo update_dyld_shared_cache

Before continuing with the build instructions, note that you will need to specify the location of the Homebrew libssl libraries during cmake with -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=, or you will receive an error from CMake about not finding libssl, or a linking error from make about not having a library for -lssl.

This path in Homebrew will differ by system (Apple Silicon: /opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@3 or macOS Intel: /usr/local/opt/openssl@3), but it can be located automatically as used below.

Building Trunk Recorder

mkdir trunk-recorder && cd trunk-recorder
git clone https://github.com/TrunkRecorder/trunk-recorder.git source
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../source -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$(brew --prefix openssl@3)
make -j
sudo make install

Continue to Configuring Trunk Recorder.

Using MacPorts

These instructions should work on OS X 10.10, OS X 10.11, and macOS 10.12.

Install MacPorts

Follow the instructions from the MacPorts project to install the appropriate version of MacPorts for your version of macOS.

If you have already installed MacPorts, make sure your ports tree is up to date:

sudo port selfupdate

(7/24/21) Note: this has been tested and works on an M1 based Mac. Some dependencies for gr-osmosdr do not support ARM64 yet and can be removed by adding a -, eg: -docs

Install GNU Radio

The preferred method for installing GNU Radio on macOS is:

sudo port install gnuradio uhd gr-osmosdr

Install tools to compile Trunk Recorder

sudo port install cmake boost libusb cppunit ffmpeg

Audio processing support

If you are interested in concluded call audio processing, optional filtering/normalization, or optional M4A creation, install ffmpeg:

sudo port install ffmpeg

Building Trunk Recorder

mkdir trunk-recorder && cd trunk-recorder
git clone https://github.com/TrunkRecorder/trunk-recorder.git source
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../source -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl
make -j
sudo make install

Configuring Trunk Recorder

The next step is to configure Trunk Recorder for the system you are trying to capture.

Running trunk recorder

If all goes well you should now have the executable named trunk-recorder, and created the config.json configuration file as described in the Wiki and Configuring Trunk Recorder.

From your build directory (e.g. trunk-build) you can now run ./trunk-recorder

Runtime options

Trunk Recorder will look for a config.json file in the same directory as it is being run in. You can point it to a different config file by using the --config argument on the command line, for example: ./trunk-recorder --config=examples/config-wmata-rtl.json.