TTK - the Topology ToolKit - Topological Data Analysis and Visualization

Please find below generic instructions for the installation of TTK from sources, under MacOS.

These specific notes describe the installation procedure used by TTK's continuous integration to build, install and test TTK under Github's virtual machines running MacOS 26.

If you are an advanced user and you do not wish to install ParaView (TTK's main user interface), you still have the possibility to install TTK without ParaView and VTK support (although we highly recommend to activate them).
In that case, simply download TTK as described in section 1, install the dependencies as detailed in section 2 and finally, directly jump to section 5 ("Installing TTK").
Examples showing how to use TTK libraries from your own C++ code can be found on this page.

Most users will want to activate TTK's ParaView support.

0. Disclaimer and troubleshooting

Installing software from source can be challenging (in particular under MacOS).
Since build chains can vary quite drastically from one system to another, the instructions below may require adjustments for your system.
In case of building issues, we recommend to check the following MacOS installation script examples for ParaView and TTK. We use these scripts on a daily basis for building automatically ParaView and TTK under MacOS, for the automatic tests of TTK's continuous integration.

1. Downloads

TTK builds on top of ParaView for its main user interface. Thus, you will first need to download ParaView's source code. Note that TTK plugins for ParaView will only work with a version of ParaView compiled from source. Thus, if you already installed ParaView with a binary copy, you may need to un-install it before proceeding. Next, download TTK from our download page.

2. Installing the dependencies

Several dependencies will need to be installed in order to compile ParaView and TTK from source. Please enter the following commands in a terminal to install them using homebrew :

brew install --cask xquartz

brew install mesa glew qt@5 ninja libomp

Note that these commands will also trigger the installation of the (numerous) dependencies of these components.

Optional dependencies

In order to enjoy the complete set of TTK features, we also recommend to install the following, optional dependencies, with the following command:




brew install boost cgal eigen graphviz spectra sqlite tbb zlib numpy qhull

3. Preparing the sources

Move the tarballs to a working directory (for instance called ~/ttk) and decompress them by entering the following commands in a terminal (this assumes that you downloaded the tarballs to the ~/Downloads directory):

mkdir ~/ttk
mv ~/Downloads/ParaView-v6.1.1.tar.gz ~/ttk/
mv ~/Downloads/ttk-1.4.0.tar.gz ~/ttk/
cd ~/ttk
tar xvzf ParaView-v6.1.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf ttk-1.4.0.tar.gz

You can delete the tarballs after the source trees have been decompressed by entering the following commands:

rm ParaView-v6.1.1.tar.gz
rm ttk-1.4.0.tar.gz

4. Patching the ParaView source tree

Note: The instructions for this step are identical to those on linux:

In order to enjoy the complete set of TTK features, we recommend at this stage to patch the ParaView source tree. This step is optional. To proceed, go to the patch directory and apply it as follows:

cd ~/ttk/ttk-1.4.0/paraview/patch
./patch-paraview-6.1.1.sh ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/

5. Configuring, building and installing ParaView

a) Configuration

To enter the configuration menu of ParaView's build, enter the following commands:

cd ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/
mkdir build
cd build
ccmake .. -G Ninja (on homebrew cmake there is no cmake-gui, although you can install this separately from https://cmake.org/download/)

Then, press 'c' to configure and we'll check/edit some CMake flags (you may have to press 't' to find them):
· Python3_EXECUTABLE should indicate the correct binary path for python by default.

Once the configuration is finished, you may want to enable additional build options (OSPRay, MPI, etc) to your liking (see the ParaView build documentation for further details). Note that certain options require the installation of additional dependencies.

Next, trigger the "Generate" action ('g') and close the configuration window when the generation is completed.

b) Build

Now you can start the compilation process by entering the following command, where N is the number of available cores on your system (this may take a while):

ninja

c) Installation

Once the build is finished, we recommend that you do not use make install. We will work directly in the build directory for the source tree instead of trying to package up a MacOS .app file in /Applications.

Finally, to enable ParaView and pvpython to find the TTK plugins we will build, we recommend setting the environment variable PV_PLUGIN_PATH to be the location where you choose to install TTK. Note that this is different from past installations where we manually installed TTK in the build directory. Instead, these instructions will assume that you will install TTK's plugins in /usr/local/lib/plugins (the cmake variable TTK_INSTALL_PLUGIN_DIR will be set accordingly in the next step).

To set this environment variable permanently, we recommend editing whatever file you normally configure these in (e.g. ~/.zshenv) and adding the line:

export PV_PLUGIN_PATH="/usr/local/lib/plugins"

Note that, by default, our installation of ParaView will search for plugins in ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/bin/paraview.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins. And, by default, our installation of pvpython will search fo plugins in ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/bin/plugins. Setting PV_PLUGIN_PATH overrides this so that both can search for TTK in a common location. If this directory does not exist, you may need to create it as well as /usr/local/scripts.

Users may want to choose to use a different location that /usr/local/lib/plugins, although this path is consistent with where the Linux installation of TTK installs them.

For more information, see https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView/Plugin_HowTo#Using_Plugins.

6. Configuring, building and installing TTK

a) Configuration

To enter the configuration menu of TTK's build, enter the following commands:

cd ~/ttk/ttk-1.4.0/
mkdir ttk_install (for installing standalone apps)
mkdir build
cd build
ccmake .. -G Ninja

The configuration window opens. Press 'c' to configure, and if it cannot yet find ParaView, we'll fix this with:

· ParaView_DIR=~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/

Press 'c' again to configure (you can ignore any warnings). Next, change:

· CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
       (this should be the default)
· CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/ttk/ttk-1.4.0/ttk_install
       (this is where standalone apps and other TTK components are installed)
· TTK_INSTALL_PLUGIN_DIR=/usr/local/lib/plugins
       (should be the default, this is where ParaView plugins are installed)

If you are an advanced user and you do not wish to activate TTK's ParaView support, set the CMake variable TTK_BUILD_PARAVIEW_PLUGINS to OFF. Examples showing how to use TTK libraries from your own VTK code can be found on this page.
Press 'c' to reconfigure (again takes a few seconds) and then press 'g' to generate.

If you are an advanced user and you do not even wish to activate TTK's VTK support, set the CMake variable TTK_BUILD_VTK_WRAPPERS to OFF. Examples showing how to use TTK libraries from your own C++ code can be found on this page.
Press 'c' to reconfigure (again takes a few seconds) and then press 'g' to generate.

Press 'c' to reconfigure (again takes a few seconds) and then press 'g' to generate.

b) Build

Now you can start the compilation process by entering the following command, where N is the number of available cores on your system:

ninja

c) Installation

Once the build is finished, enter the following command to install your build of TTK into your ParaView installation:

ninja install

Note that in addition to copying the TTK plugins to your ParaView installation (TTK_INSTALL_PLUGIN_DIR), the above command also installed a collection of standalone TTK programs to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. These can be used outside of ParaView, either as command line tools or VTK-based graphical user interfaces. To list them:

ls CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin/*Cmd
ls CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin/*Gui

Replacing CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX with what we used above.

Finally, to make sure the example data files are included in the right path, you have to manually copy the example data into the ParaView .app as well:

cd ~/ttk/ttk-1.4.0/paraview/patch/data
mkdir -p ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/bin/paraview.app/Contents/share/paraview-5.11/examples
cp * ~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/bin/paraview.app/Contents/share/paraview-5.11/examples

7. Checking your TTK installation

If you applied all the above steps successfully (including step 4), you can now open a terminal and type the following command to load your TTK-patched ParaView:

cd 
~/ttk/ParaView-v6.1.1/build/bin/paraview.app/Contents/MacOS/

./paraview

At this point, everything from the standard installation procedure should be accessible. Congrats!

Now, please visit our tutorial page to watch video tutorials showing how to use TTK with ParaView with concrete examples and how to use it from your own Python or C++ code or how to extend TTK by writing up your own module!