BUILD_MAC_KX.md — building OrcaSlicer-KX on macOS (Apple Silicon)

macOS build guide for this fork. Upstream (viewit) ships only Linux & Windows binaries; this fork exists to add the macOS build (see Releases for the .app). The upstream CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md are left untouched.

Verified recipe: run as-is on 2026-07-02 on a Mac M2 (arm64, macOS 25.x). It produced a working .app that launches. Timings below are real, measured.

What this is

Fork of OrcaSlicer-KX (https://gitea.it-drui.de/viewit/OrcaSlicer-KX), itself a fork of SoftFever/OrcaSlicer with patches for the Anycubic Kobra X. Current checkout: tag v2.4.1-kx1.

The fork's changes vs upstream are branding (logo/icon/splash/about), redirecting the updater to Gitea, and bugfix backports. They do not touch anything platform-specific (no CMake, no build scripts, no src/platform, no *.mm, no Info.plist). The macOS icon (resources/Icon.icns, resources/images/OrcaSlicer.icns) already ships regenerated with KX branding. So building on Mac is not a port, it's a recompile using upstream's own build_release_macos.sh.

Upstream only publishes Linux (AppImage) and Windows (zip) — there is no official .dmg. This clone is for producing the Mac build yourself.

Requirements (one time)

Xcode Command Line Tools (NOT full Xcode.app — see the -x note). Check: xcode-select -p prints a path.
Homebrew with:

brew install cmake ninja automake texinfo libtool pkg-config

(automake texinfo libtool are needed by the deps stage; cmake+ninja by the build.)

Why `-x` (Ninja) and not the default

build_release_macos.sh defaults to the Xcode CMake generator, which requires full Xcode.app (~15 GB from the App Store). The -x flag switches to Ninja, which works with just the Command Line Tools. Always use it here.

Build (arm64 / Apple Silicon)

Two stages, run from the repo root (~/Developer/OrcaSlicer-KX):

# Stage 1 — dependencies (Boost, wxWidgets, TBB, OCCT, OpenCV, ...)
#           202 static libs → deps/build/arm64/OrcaSlicer_dep
./build_release_macos.sh -d -x -a arm64      # measured: ~14.5 min

# Stage 2 — the slicer itself → build/arm64/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer.app
./build_release_macos.sh -s -x -a arm64      # measured: ~18 min

Flags: -d deps only · -s slicer only · -x Ninja · -a arch. On an M2 with 16 GB, -1 (single job) is not needed; if a Mac with less RAM OOMs while linking, add -1.

Output: build/arm64/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer.app (native arm64, ~367 MB, version 2.4.1-kx1).

Normal output that is NOT an error

"CMake Deprecation" warnings and Performing Test ... - Failed lines in the deps stage are compiler feature detection, not failures. The build still finishes with exit 0 and [202/202] Completed.
The signature is ad-hoc / linker-signed. Strict codesign -v and spctl complain ("code has no resources but signature indicates they must be present"). This is harmless: a local build is not quarantined, so it opens with a double-click, no Gatekeeper block.

Install into /Applications

There is usually an official /Applications/OrcaSlicer.app. To avoid overwriting it, copy under a different name:

ditto build/arm64/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer.app /Applications/OrcaSlicer-KX.app
open /Applications/OrcaSlicer-KX.app          # verify it boots

(ditto preserves the bundle + ad-hoc signature better than cp -R.)

Update to a new tag (e.g. kx2)

git fetch --tags
git checkout <new-tag>
./build_release_macos.sh -s -x -a arm64       # deps are cached ⇒ only the slicer recompiles (~18 min)

If the new tag changes a dependency, run the -d stage again first.

Publishing the macOS release

The distributable is a zip of the .app (matching how upstream ships Windows):

ditto -c -k --keepParent build/arm64/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer.app \
  OrcaSlicer-KX-v2.4.1-kx1-macOS-arm64.zip

Attach it to a Gitea Release on this fork. Gotcha: a freshly created Gitea fork may have the Releases unit disabled (has_releases:false), which makes asset downloads return 404 even though the upload succeeded. Enable it once: PATCH /api/v1/repos/<owner>/<repo> with {"has_releases": true}.

Gotchas

Updater points to Gitea, not upstream — commit 7ed0173 hardcodes https://gitea.it-drui.de/api/v1/repos/viewit/OrcaSlicer-KX/releases/latest. There is no macOS artifact there, so "check for updates" won't find a macOS build. Harmless; updating = recompiling (above).
Universal / Intel: -a x86_64 (Intel), -a universal (fat binary; requires prior arm64 and x86_64 builds). On Apple Silicon, arm64 is the right choice.
Not notarized — distributing to third parties would need an Apple Developer account ($99/yr) + notarization. Not needed for local use.

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