Setup your Keyman build environment on macOS

May 21, 2025 · View on GitHub

This document describes prerequisites and tools required for building various Keyman projects on macOS. Each project will also have additional notes linked below.

Target Projects

On macOS, you can build the following projects:

The following libraries can also be built:

  • core (macOS, wasm targets)
  • Common/Web

The following projects cannot be built on macOS:

  • Keyman for Linux
  • Keyman for Windows
  • Keyman Developer (IDE component)

System Requirements

  • Minimum macOS version: macOS Catalina 10.15 or Big Sur 11.0

Note: to make a fully M1-compatible release build of Keyman for macOS (for the setup Applescript), Big Sur 11.0 is required, as osacompile on earlier versions does not build for arm64 (M1). The build will still work on earlier versions, but the installer won't be able to run on M1 Macs that do not have Rosetta 2 installed.

Prerequisites

Many dependencies are only required for specific projects.

  • XCode (iOS, macOS) 12.4 or later is needed only for Keyman for macOS and Keyman for iOS.
    • Install from App Store
    • Accept the Xcode license: sudo xcodebuild -license accept

The remaining dependencies can be installed via script: resources/devbox/macos/macos.sh

This script will also update your environment to the values in: resources/devbox/macos/keyman.macos.env.sh

These dependencies are also listed below if you'd prefer to install manually.

Example shell profile script

keyman.macos.env.sh may be sourced within your ~/.bashrc / ~/.zprofile in order to regularly apply its path settings to the terminal during local development.

For a .zprofile...

# Adds homebrew-managed dependencies to $PATH
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

# Replace right-hand side with the path to your local copy of the repo
export KEYMAN_ROOT=~/keymanapp/keyman

# May be called to apply build-path settings, such as those allowing
# direct call of npm scripts without `npm run`.
set_keyman_standard_build_path() {
  PATH="${KEYMAN_ROOT}/node_modules/.bin:$PATH"
}

# builder-script tab autocompletion
autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
autoload bashcompinit
bashcompinit
source "${KEYMAN_ROOT}/resources/builder_completion.inc.sh"

# environment variable initialization
source "${KEYMAN_ROOT}/resources/devbox/macos/keyman.macos.env.sh"

Shared Dependencies

  • HomeBrew, Bash 5.0+, jq, Python 2.7, Python 3, Meson, Ninja, coreutils, Pandoc
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew install bash jq python3 meson ninja coreutils pandoc pyenv
# Python 2.7 required for DeviceKit (among others?) at present
pyenv install 2.7.18
pyenv global 2.7.18
echo 'eval "$(pyenv init --path)"' >> ~/.bash_profile

On macOS, you will need to adjust your PATH so that coreutils’ realpath takes precedence over the BSD one:

# Credit: brew info coreutils
PATH="$HOMEBREW_PREFIX/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

KeymanWeb Dependencies

  • node.js, emscripten 3.1.46 or later

node.js

Our recommended way to install node.js is with nvm. This makes it easy to switch between versions of node.js.

Alternatively, you can install node.js with brew.

See node.md for more information.

emscripten

The recommended way to install emscripten is with the official method, as that then allows the build scripts to select the appropriate version automatically.

To install emscripten, cd to an appropriate path, and then:

git clone https://github.com/emscripten-core/emsdk
cd emsdk
emsdk install 3.1.58
emsdk activate 3.1.58
cd upstream/emscripten
npm install
export EMSCRIPTEN_BASE="$(pwd)"
echo "export EMSCRIPTEN_BASE=\"$EMSCRIPTEN_BASE\"" >> .bashrc

If you are updating an existing install of Emscripten:

cd emsdk
git pull
emsdk install 3.1.58
emsdk activate 3.1.58
cd upstream/emscripten
npm install

You will want to add EMSCRIPTEN_BASE to your .bashrc.

![WARNING] Don't put EMSDK on the path, i.e. don't source emsdk_env.sh.

Emscripten very unhelpfully overwrites JAVA_HOME, and adds its own versions of Python, Node and Java to the PATH. For best results, restart your shell after installing Emscripten so that you don't end up with the wrong versions.

Optional environment variables:

To let the Keyman build scripts control the version of Emscripten installed on your computer:

export KEYMAN_USE_EMSDK=1

Keyman for iOS Dependencies

  • XCode, swiftlint, carthage
brew install swiftlint carthage

Keyman for Mac Dependencies

  • XCode, carthage, cocoapods
brew install carthage cocoapods

Keyman for Android Dependencies

  • openjdk 21, Android SDK, Android Studio, Ant, Gradle, Maven
brew install openjdk@21 android-sdk android-studio ant gradle maven
# update path
source ../resources/devbox/macos/keyman.macos.env.sh
# optionally install sdk images
sdkmanager "system-images;android-30;google_apis;armeabi-v7a"
sdkmanager --update
sdkmanager --licenses
  • Note: Run Android Studio once after installation to install additional components such as emulator images and SDK updates.

Keyman Developer Command Line (kmc)

  • node.js, emscripten
brew install node emscripten

Optional Tools

  • sentry-cli: Uploading symbols for Sentry-based error reporting

    brew install getsentry/tools/sentry-cli