Prerequisites

Install Xcode and Homebrew. Then, install the required packages with:

brew install git cmake ninja 

Building DuckDB

Clone and build DuckDB as follows.

git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb cd duckdb GEN=ninja make 

Once the build finishes successfully, you can find the duckdb binary in the build directory:

build/release/duckdb 

For different build configurations (debug, relassert, etc.), please consult the Build Configurations page.

Troubleshooting

Debug Build Prints malloc Warning

Problem: The debug build on macOS prints a malloc warning, e.g.:

duckdb(83082,0x205b30240) malloc: nano zone abandoned due to inability to reserve vm space. 

To prevent this, set the MallocNanoZone flag to 0:

MallocNanoZone=0 make debug 

To apply this change for your future terminal sessions, you can add the following to your ~/.zshrc file:

export MallocNanoZone=0