[gretl main page]

Step 0: install X11, if need be (first time only)

If you're running OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), and you don't already have X11 installed, you'll have to do this first. (X11 came installed by default on OS X 10.6 and 10.7.) You get X11 from macosforge.

Step 1: install GTK (first time only)

Some additional libraries are needed to support gretl, namely GTK and friends. If you are running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher, install GTK using GTK2-framework.pkg. Some notes on this package can be found in GTK.pdf.

If you are running an older version of OS X (10.5 or lower) you should install this version of GTK (or alternate download). Caution: This version of GTK will not work on OS X 10.7 (Lion).

Step 2: install gretl

Now for gretl itself: grab and install either the latest release or the current "snapshot". The snapshot is more up to date: often it will contain bug-fixes but sometimes it will contain newly introduced bugs. To see what's new in the snapshot, take a look at the gretl Change log (the "in progress" entry).

After downloading, double-click on the gretl dmg.gz file to unzip it. This will produce a dmg file; double-click on that to mount the disk image. Open the disk image in the Finder and drag Gretl onto Applications. But note: if you're updating an existing installation of gretl you should first open Applications in the Finder and delete the old Gretl item.

Once you're done installing gretl you can eject the disk image and delete the dmg and dmg.gz files.

Trouble?

The gretl disk image is documented in README.pdf, which contains some suggestions for trouble-shooting. Briefly, if you want to debug a non-functioning gretl on OS X, please try this: open an X11 terminal window; change directory (cd) to Gretl.app (where you installed the package); change directory to Contents/Resources/bin and run the command

./gretl

This should give you some feedback on what is going wrong.

Optional extras

You may wish to install X-12-ARIMA and/or TRAMO/SEATS. These are specialized programs for analysis of seasonal time series data, in versions compatible with gretl.