# Installing with the Big Sur update

**URL:** <https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894>\
**Category:** SW4\
**Tags:** installation\
**Created:** [July 6, 2021, 8:17pm UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894 "2021-07-06T20:17:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ChelseyA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@ChelseyA](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/ChelseyA)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2021, 8:17pm UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894/1 "2021-07-06T20:17:34Z")

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Hi! I’m having trouble installing SW4 on my computer with the Big Sur update with an M1 processor. It doesn’t seem to be compatible with the compiler and I get an error every time I try to install gcc7 or gcc72, and the SW4 file doesn’t seem to open. Has anyone run into the same issue and managed to install with Big Sur? Thank you!

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**Author:** ![jbnaliboff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/58956e/32.png) [@jbnaliboff](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/jbnaliboff)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2021, 8:35pm UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894/2 "2021-07-06T20:35:43Z")

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Hi Chelsey,

Thank you for posting to the forums! However, I think this should be reposted in the SW4 forum (it is currently in the ASPECT forum).

Out of curiosity, how are you installing gcc? Through Homebrew? Spack might be a good option to have a self-contained set of libraries for SW4?

Cheers,  
John

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**Author:** ![ChelseyA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@ChelseyA](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/ChelseyA)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2021, 8:50pm UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894/3 "2021-07-06T20:50:36Z")

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Thank you! I installed through Homebrew but I was unable to install gcc7 specifically and I almost got through the whole installation until I went to build SW4 with make and it gave me an error because I wasn’t able to install gcc7. I will try with Spack

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**Author:** ![ChelseyA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@ChelseyA](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/ChelseyA)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2021, 12:19am UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/installing-with-the-big-sur-update/1894/4 "2021-07-09T00:19:14Z")

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It seems my peers and I have found a way around installing the gcc compilers! For those of you on a Mac with Big Sur Darwin 20 and up trying to install sw4 through the installation guide replace the commands for the compilers using gcc7 with these using gcc11 and openmpi, and it should work:  
shell\> sudo port install gcc11  
shell\> sudo port select --set gcc mp-gcc11  
shell\> sudo port install openmpi-gcc11  
shell\> sudo port select --set mpi openmpi-gcc11-fortran

Hope this helps!