Compiling FileZilla 3 under macOS

This documentation explains how to setup a build environment for FileZilla 3 and how to compile it under Mac OS X using Xcode. These directions have been tested under Tiger and Leopard on an Intel Mac. Other Mac OS versions may or may not work.

See this post for more information about the build process on Tiger along with some automated build files.

Automated building with Fink

You may find it easier to use Fink to automate the process of building FileZilla from source.

Advantages of Fink

• works under Tiger and Leopard on Intel and PPC
• all necessary dependencies are downloaded, built, and installed automatically with a single command
• does not interfere with any system software or other third-party software on your machine
• as new versions of FileZilla are released, rebuilding and upgrading is automated

Disadvantages of Fink

• packaged version of FileZilla can sometimes lag behind the newest release
• customizing the build process is not straightforward

Instructions

1. Install Fink per the User's Guide.
2. Enable the "unstable" tree per this FAQ entry.
3. Run fink install filezilla in a Terminal window.

Once the build process completes successfully, you will find a FileZilla icon in your Applications folder.

Setting up the build environment

This includes the compiler and the required tools to build FileZilla 3 and its dependencies.

Xcode

You will need to download the version of Xcode appropriate for your version of OS X.

• Xcode 2.5 for Tiger
• Xcode 3.2.6 for Leopard and Snow Leopard
• Xcode 4 for Lion can be found in the App Store

If you are using Xcode 2.5, you will need to customize the install. Ensure all options under "Command Line Support" are checked. In Xcode 3, this is not necessary.

Building the Dependencies

FileZilla depends on the work of several open source projects. We must build them before we can build FileZilla.

If you have a multi-core machine, the build may go faster if you change "nice make" to "nice make -jN" where N equals the number of cores you have + 1 (e.g. dual-core: N = 3).

pkg-config

Note: Mac OS X Lion (10.7) appears to come with pkg-config already installed. So you should be able to skip this if you have 10.7 or later.

Download pkg-config. The current version is pkg-config-0.28.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/pkg-config-0.28.tar.gz
cd pkg-config-0.28
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/pkg-config --with-internal-glib \
&& nice make && make install

GNU gettext

Download GNU gettext. The current version is gettext-0.18.2.1.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/gettext-0.18.2.1.tar.gz
cd gettext-0.18.2.1
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/gettext && nice make && make install

xz-utils

Download xz-utils. The current version is xz-5.0.4.tar.bz2.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

cd /tmp
tar xjf ~/Downloads/xz-5.0.4.tar.bz2
cd xz-5.0.4
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/xz && nice make && make install

wxWidgets

Download wxWidgets. The current version for Mac is wxMac-2.8.12.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386"
cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/wxMac-2.8.12.tar.gz
cd wxMac-2.8.12
mkdir build-wx && cd build-wx
../configure --disable-compat26 --enable-unicode --prefix $HOME/filezilla/wxMac \
--enable-printfposparam && nice make && make install

GNU libidn

Download GNU libidn. The current version is libidn-1.26.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386"
cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/libidn-1.26.tar.gz
cd libidn-1.26
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/libidn && nice make && make install

GNU mp

Download GNU mp. The current version is gmp-5.1.2.tar.bz2.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386"
cd /tmp
tar xjf ~/Downloads/gmp-5.1.2.tar.bz2
cd gmp-5.1.2
./configure -prefix $HOME/filezilla/gmp --build=i386-apple-darwin && nice make && make install

libnettle

Download libnettle. The current version is nettle-2.7.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS} -I$HOME/filezilla/gmp/include"
export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386 -L$HOME/filezilla/gmp/lib"
cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/nettle-2.7.tar.gz
cd nettle-2.7
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/nettle && nice make && make install

GNU TLS

Download GNU TLS. The current version is gnutls-3.2.0.tar.xz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS} -I$HOME/filezilla/gmp/include -I$HOME/filezilla/libidn/include"
export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386 -L$HOME/filezilla/gmp/lib -L$HOME/filezilla/libidn/lib"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:$HOME/filezilla/libidn/lib/pkgconfig"
export PATH="$HOME/filezilla/xz/bin:$PATH"
cd /tmp
xzcat ~/Downloads/gnutls-3.2.0.tar.xz | tar x
cd gnutls-3.2.0
./configure --prefix=$HOME/filezilla/gnutls --build=i386-apple-darwin \
--with-libnettle-prefix=$HOME/filezilla/nettle && nice make && make install

SQLite

Download SQLite. The current version is sqlite-autoconf-3071700.tar.gz.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

export CFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -O2 -arch i386"
export CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export OBJCXXFLAGS="${OBJCXXFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
export LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -arch i386"
cd /tmp
tar xzf ~/Downloads/sqlite-autoconf-3071700.tar.gz
cd sqlite-autoconf-3071700
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/sqlite --disable-static && nice make && make install

Building FileZilla 3

Download the FileZilla source. The current version is FileZilla_3.5.1.src.tar.bz2.

Start Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following commands:

cd /tmp
tar xjf ~/Desktop/FileZilla_3.5.1_src.tar.bz2
cd filezilla-3.5.1
export PATH=$HOME/filezilla/wxMac/bin:$HOME/filezilla/gettext/bin:$HOME/filezilla/pkg-config/bin:$PATH
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/filezilla/gnutls/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/filezilla/sqlite/lib/pkgconfig
export CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/filezilla/libidn/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/filezilla/libidn/lib"
./configure && nice make
cd FileZilla.app/Contents/MacOS
strip filezilla fzputtygen fzsftp
cd - && mv FileZilla.app ~/Desktop

If you get an error after "nice make", try this:

rm -rf FileZilla.app && nice make

Troubleshooting

If you run into problems, please make sure you've followed each step exactly how it is explained and that you haven't missed any steps along the way. Feel free to ask questions on the FileZilla forums.

Building under 10.6 Snow Leopard

When trying to build these codes under 10.6 you might - on certain machines - end up with errors. The reason is that we fail to compile wxWidgets for 64 bits. See [1] for how to build wxMac for 32 bits, or we may just use the Macports to install wxWidgets:

sudo port install wxwidgets

And now we also need to build libgpg-error, libgcrypt, GNU TLS and GNU libidn for 32 bits. Here is the commands for libgpg-error:

$ arch_flags="-arch i386"
$ ./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/libgpg-error  CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"  \
CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags"  OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"
$ nice make -j5 && make install

The commands for installing libgcrypt:

cd libgcrypt-1.4.6
./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/libgcrypt --with-gpg-error-prefix=$HOME/filezilla/libgpg-error   CC="gcc -m32"
nice make -j5 && make install

Note CC="gcc -m32" is used for building Assemble code for 32 bits. For GNU TLS:

$ ./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/gnutls --with-libgcrypt --with-libgcrypt-prefix=$HOME/filezilla/libgcrypt  \
CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags"  \
OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"
$ nice make -j5 && make install

And for GNU libidn:

$ cd libidn-1.22
$ ./configure --prefix $HOME/filezilla/libidn  CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" \
LDFLAGS="$arch_flags"  OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"
$ nice make -j5 && make install

Now we can build FileZilla:

cd filezilla-3.5.0
export PATH=$HOME/filezilla/wxMac/bin:$HOME/filezilla/gettext/bin:$HOME/filezilla/pkg-config/bin:$PATH
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/filezilla/gnutls/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/filezilla/sqlite/lib/pkgconfig
export CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/filezilla/libidn/include"

$ ./configure  CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" CPPFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags"  \
OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"   --with-tinyxml=builtin  --with-idn-lib=$HOME/filezilla/libidn/lib/libidn.dylib
$ nice make -j5
$ cd FileZilla.app/Contents/MacOS
$ strip filezilla fzputtygen  fzsftp 
$ cd -
$ mv FileZilla.app/  ~/Desktop/