Install Gazebo on Mac (using homebrew)

Gazebo and several of its dependencies can be compiled on OS X with Homebrew using the osrf/simulation tap. Gazebo is straightforward to install on Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or higher. Installation on older versions requires changing the default standard library and rebuilding dependencies due to the use of c++11. For purposes of this tutorial, I will assume OS X 10.11 or greater is in use.

Default installation: one-liner

1. Install

   curl -ssL http://get.gazebosim.org | sh
   

2. Run

   gazebo
   

Alternative installation: step-by-step

1. Install homebrew, which should also prompt you to install the XCode command-line tools:

   ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
   

2. Install XQuartz, which provides X11 support and is required by Gazebo and OGRE

3. Run the following commands to install gazebo quickly with a precompiled binary:

   brew tap osrf/simulation
   brew install gazebo11
   gazebo
   

Optional dependencies

The Gazebo formula has an optional dependency on the DART physics engine, which must be installed using the following procedure prior to installing Gazebo11 without using the precompiled binary:

    brew tap dartsim/dart
    brew install dartsim
    # Gazebo will be built with DART (autodetected), bullet and simbody
    brew install gazebo11 --build-from-source

Versions

The formula currently installs version 11.0 of Gazebo. Version 9 can be installed using the gazebo9 formula and Gazebo 8 using gazebo8. To install the latest version of Gazebo's default branch:

    brew install gazebo11 --HEAD