Installing MPF on Mac

MPF can be used on Mac OS X 10.9 and newer, including Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra and High Sierra.

Note

MPF cannot run in a Mac virtual machine (like in VMware Fusion or Parallels) if the guest OS is Mac, though running MPF in a Windows or Linux VM on a Mac is fine.

Also at this time, installing all the components you need to run MPF on a Mac will require almost 2 GB of disk space. MPF itself it only about 12 MB, but there are a lot of supporting things that MPF needs as you’ll see here.

We have a video which shows this entire installation process in action which is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJEfQGffXsA

Here are the steps to install MPF on a Mac:

Step 0. Uninstall your previous MPF app installation

The process for running MPF on a Mac has changed as of Jan 10, 2017. Previously we had an MPF.app that you downloaded which contained Python and everything you needed.

If you used MPF on a Mac prior to this and you have the MPF.app, you need to remove it first. If you have never installed MPF on your Mac before, then proceed directly to Step 1 below.

To remove the old MPF Mac installation:

1. Delete the “MPF.app” from your Applications folder.
2. Delete the “mpf” alias in /usr/local/bin.
3. Delete the “kivy” alias in /usr/local/bin.

If you don’t know how to find your /usr/local/bin folder, you can use the “Go to Folder” technique shown in Step 1.

Prerequisites and Python Environment

1. Download the Mac Multimedia Frameworks

MPF uses open source multimedia frameworks called GStreamer and SDL2 for its graphics, video, and sound features. So next you need to download these frameworks and copy them to your Mac’s frameworks folder. There are actually five different frameworks MPF needs, and downloading them all separately is kind of a pain (especially finding the right versions and everything), so we have created a single ZIP file which has everything you need.

Download the zip of the multimedia frameworks here. (Thanks to MPF developer Jan Kantert for hosting it!) The zipped download is 170 MB, and the unzipped size is 529 MB.

Unzip it, and copy (or drag and drop) the five things in the zip file’s Frameworks folder to your own Mac’s /Library/Frameworks folder.

Depending on your Mac’s settings, you might not see the /Library/Frameworks folder in Finder. If this is the case, use the Go -> Go to Folder… menu, and then type “/Library/Frameworks” and hit enter.

The following three images illustrate the steps:

Note that you will need to authenticate (which just means you have to enter your password) in order to be able to copy those frameworks into your Mac’s frameworks folder. The authentication message will automatically pop up when you drag and drop the files:

When you’re done, your Mac’s /Library/Frameworks folder should have the five new frameworks (plus whatever random ones you already had), which should look something like this:

2. Install the Mac developer tools

Next you have to install something called the “Command Line Developer Tools” which is a package of software development tools created by Apple which MPF relies on to get installed.

To do this, you need to use the “Terminal” app (which is essentially a command prompt window for the Mac).

The easiest way to launch the Terminal app is to use Spotlight (press the CMD + Spacebar) and then just type “Terminal”, like this:

Next, type the following command into the prompt in the terminal and press Enter:

xcode-select --install

That should pop up a box which gives you the option to install the command line tools, like this:

Click the “Install” button here to get just the command line tools. The “Get XCode” button installs more than you need.

The download will be about 150 MB, and the total install will be about 1.1 GB.

After the installation of the tools you may need to accept the license agreeement from Apple. The following command starts that process in the Terminal, just follow the instructions provided:

sudo xcodebuild -license

If you already have the command line tools installed, that’s fine. You’ll get some kind of error saying they’re already installed and you can move on.

3. Install Python 3.5+

MPF is written in a computer language called “Python”. This means you have to install Python first before you can use MPF. Luckily this is just a one-time install, and you don’t have to install it again if you update MPF later.

On Mac platforms, MPF requires Python 3.5 or newer. It is well-tested on 3.6 and somewhat tested on 3.7.

You can download Python 3.6 directly via this link. (Note that the final digit in the Python version number is the “patch” number, so 3.6.8 is the latest version of Python 3.6 as of the time this document was last updated.)

Installing Python is pretty straightforward. It’s a standard Mac installation package. You can click next, next, next, agree to the license, enter your password, and you’re all set.

Note

Macs have an older version of Python built in, but it’s Python 2.x, and MPF requires Python 3, so that’s why you have to install Python now. The new Python 3 that you install here will happily live alongside the Python 2.x that your Mac already has.

You can check to make sure Python 3 installed correctly from the Terminal window. To do that, run the command:

python3 --version

You should see it print something like “Python 3.6.5”. Note that you have to run the command “Python3”, not “Python”, since the regular python command without the “3” on the end points to the Python 2.x that’s built into your Mac. Here’s a screenshot showing running “python” and “python3” and the different between the two:

4. Create a Virtual Environment

Python includes a utility call “virtual environment” that creates a safe, isolated place to install packages and configure python. It’s strongly recommended to install MPF in a virtual environment, so that other Python programs can’t interfere with it (and it can’t interfere with others).

To create a virtual enviroment, choose a folder where you want to install a copy of python and keep the enviroment’s packages. For this example, we’ll call the environment “mpfenv” and put it in our home directory (known as “~”).

python3 -m venv ~/mpfenv

Note

If you have multiple versions of Python3 (say, 3.4 and 3.6), you can specify which one to use in the virtual environment: python3.6 -m venv ~/mpfenv

A virtual environment is recommended for any general-use computer you’ll be using MPF on. For a dedicated MPF machine that will have no other programs installed (for example, a computer inside a pinball cabinet), a virtual environment is not recommended.

5. Activate your Virtual Environment

To keep itself isolated from other programs, your virtual enviroment only activates when you tell it to. You can enable the virtual environment with the dot command from the terminal:

. ~/mpfenv/bin/activate

Note that the first character is a period, followed by a space, then the path to your virtual environment and “/bin/activate”.

Note

You may want to write this step down, as you’ll run it every time you open up a terminal window to work on MPF

You’ll know you’re in the virtual environment because the console prompt will include the name of your venv in parenthesis.

My-Mac:~ python --version
Python 2.7.10
My-Mac:~ . ~/mpfenv/bin/activate

(mpfenv) My-Mac:~ python --version
Python 3.6.8
(mpfenv) My-Mac:~

Note

The python you used to create the virtual environment will now be the default python. Outside the virtual environment “python” is Python 2 and you must type “python3” to use Python 3; inside the virtual environment, you can use “python” to refer to Python 3.

6. Install/upgrade some Python components

4.1 Upgrade Pip

Python includes a utility called “pip” which is the name of the Python Package Manager. Pip is used to install Python packages and applications from the web. (It’s kind of like an app store for Python apps.)

If you are not using a virtual environment and have both Python 2 and Python 3 on your system, you’ll most likely need to use pip3. Check your version to see:

My-Mac:~ $ pip --version
pip 8.0.2 from /usr/bin/pip (python 2.7)
My-Mac:~ $ pip3 --version
pip 16.2.1 from /usr/bin/pip3 (python 3.6)

If your pip is for Python 2, then you’ll use pip3 through the rest of this guide.

If you created a virtual environment using Python 3, then pip will be the same as pip3 and you can use them interchangably.

(mpfenv) My-Mac:~ $ pip --version
pip 19.0.1 from ~/mpfenv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip (python 3.6)
(mpfenv) My-Mac:~ $ pip3 --version
pip 19.0.1 from ~/mpfenv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip (python 3.6)

The versions of pip that come with Python aren’t always the newest, so it’s a good idea to update pip by running the following command:

pip install --upgrade pip

The latest version of pip should now be installed.

4.2 Install Setuptools and Cython

Next, we need to install and update a few other python packages required to run mpf by running the following command:

pip install --upgrade setuptools cython

This command will download and install the latest versions of the setuptools and cython packages. The results will look something like this (though the exact version numbers might be different depending on what’s the latest whenever you’re running this):

Collecting setuptools
  Downloading setuptools-32.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (479kB)
    100% |################################| 481kB 4.3MB/s
Collecting cython==0.25.2
  Downloading Cython-0.25.2-cp35-cp35m-macosx_10_6_intel.macosx_10_9_intel.macosx_10_9_x86_64.macosx_10_10_intel.macosx_10_10_x86_64.whl (3.8MB)
    100% |################################| 3.8MB 7.6MB/s
Installing collected packages: setuptools, cython
Successfully installed cython-0.25.2 setuptools-32.3.1

4.3 Install Kivy

Finally, we need to install a graphics framework called Kivy.

By default, pip will download and install precompiled binaries. The Kivy binaries include frameworks that can conflict with the Mac Library frameworks we added in step 1, so instead we want pip to download the uncompiled Kivy files and make a new binary.

We can tell pip to do that with the following command:

pip install kivy --no-binary :all:

The installation of Kivy may take a couple of minutes.

Installing MPF & MC

7. Install MPF & MC (Stable Release)

First, double-check that you’ve activated your virtual enviroment, if you set one up. Next you can run pip to install MPF itself, along with MPF-MC (the Mission Pinball Framework Media Controller).

Install MPF and MC like this:

pip install mpf mpf-mc

Note

If you are using High Sierra or newer and aren’t using a virtual environment, you may encounter a permissions error. If so, add --user to the end of the above command.

Your results should look something like the results below. The MPF install will download and install several other packages which what all these other things are.

My-Mac:~ $ pip3 install mpf-mc
Collecting mpf-mc
  Downloading mpf-mc-0.32.12.tar.gz (11.1MB)
    100% |################################| 11.1MB 29.6MB/s
Collecting ruamel.yaml<0.11,>=0.10 (from mpf-mc)
  Downloading ruamel.yaml-0.10.23.tar.gz (228kB)
    100% |################################| 235kB 9.0MB/s
Collecting mpf>=0.32.6 (from mpf-mc)
  Downloading mpf-0.32.6.tar.gz (556kB)
    100% |################################| 563kB 18.0MB/s
Collecting kivy>=1.9.1 (from mpf-mc)
  Downloading kivy-1.9.1.tar.gz (16.4MB)
    100% |################################| 16.4MB 7.4MB/s
Collecting ruamel.base>=1.0.0 (from ruamel.yaml<0.11,>=0.10->mpf-mc)
  Downloading ruamel.base-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pyserial>=3.2.0 (from mpf>=0.32.6->mpf-mc)
  Downloading pyserial-3.2.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (189kB)
    100% |################################| 194kB 4.1MB/s
Collecting pyserial-asyncio>=0.2 (from mpf>=0.32.6->mpf-mc)
  Downloading pyserial_asyncio-0.3-py3-none-any.whl
Collecting Kivy-Garden>=0.1.4 (from kivy>=1.9.1->mpf-mc)
  Downloading kivy-garden-0.1.4.tar.gz
Collecting requests (from Kivy-Garden>=0.1.4->kivy>=1.9.1->mpf-mc)
  Downloading requests-2.12.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (576kB)
    100% |################################| 583kB 4.8MB/s
Installing collected packages: ruamel.base, ruamel.yaml, pyserial, pyserial-asyncio, mpf, requests, Kivy-Garden, kivy, mpf-mc
  Running setup.py install for ruamel.yaml ... done
  Running setup.py install for mpf ... done
  Running setup.py install for Kivy-Garden ... done
  Running setup.py install for kivy ... done
  Running setup.py install for mpf-mc ... done
Successfully installed Kivy-Garden-0.1.4 kivy-1.9.1 mpf-0.32.6 mpf-mc-0.32.12 pyserial-3.2.1 pyserial-asyncio-0.3 requests-2.12.4 ruamel.base-1.0.0 ruamel.yaml-0.10.23
My-Mac:~ $

If you want to make sure that MPF was installed, run:

mpf --version

This command can be run from anywhere and should produce output something like this:

My-Mac:~ $ mpf --version
MPF v0.51.3

(Note that the actual version number of your MPF installation will be whatever version is the latest.)

7.2 Install MPF & MC (Development Build)

The stable release of MPF is updated every few months, after being tested and used by the development team. If you want to play with the most up-to-date changes, you can run MPF from the latest development build. This is not recommended for most users.

Note

The development builds may include new features in progress, changes to behavior, and bugs. Running the development builds is recommended for people who want to actively participate in the development and testing of MPF.

The installation instructions are the same, except for including --pre in the install command (for “prerelease”).

pip install --upgrade --pre mpf mpf-mc

The prereleases will have “dev” in their version number to indicate that they are under development.

My-Mac:~ $ mpf --version
MPF v0.52.0.dev3

If you want to switch from the development build back to the stable release, uninstall and run the install command without --pre.

pip uninstall mpf mpf-mc
pip install mpf mpf-mc

Running Pinball Games in MPF

8. Download & run the “Demo Man” example game

Now that you have MPF installed, you probably want to see it in action. The easiest way to do that is to download a bundle of MPF examples and run our “Demo Man” example game. To do that, follow the instructions in the How to run “Demo Man”, an MPF example game guide. But make sure to get the -dev Version for 0.50.

There’s another example project you can also check out if you want called the “MC Demo” (for media controller demo) that lets you step through a bunch of example display things (slides, widgets, sounds, videos, etc). Instructions for running the MC Demo are here.

9. Install whatever drivers your hardware controller needs

If you’re using MPF with a physical machine, then there will be some specific steps you’ll need to take to get the drivers installed and configured for whatever control system you’ve chosen. See the control systems documentation for details. (You don’t have to worry about that now if you just want to play with MPF first.)

Running MPF

See the section How to start MPF and run your game for details and command-line options.

10. Keeping MPF up-to-date

Since MPF is a work-in-progress, you can use the pip command to update your MPF installation.

To to this, run the following:

pip3 install --upgrade mpf mpf-mc

This will trigger pip to contact the PyPI servers to see if there’s a newer version of MPF or MC (and any of their requirements). If newer versions are found, pip will download and install them.

Warning

If you are upgrading from MPF 0.33 to 0.50 you will need to manually perform several migration steps to modify your configuration files or they will not work in MPF 0.50. Please refer to Migrating from config version 4 to 5 of MPF for step-by-step instructions.

The standard upgrade will only find stable releases, which are recommended for most users. To install the latest development build, which may include new features and fixes (but might also break or have new bugs), include “–pre” in your upgrade command:

pip3 install --upgrade --pre mpf mpf-mc

To downgrade (or install a specific release x.yy.z) run:

pip3 install mpf==x.yy.z
pip3 install mpf-mc==x.yy.z

Next steps!

Now that MPF is installed, you can follow our step-by-step tutorial which will show you how to start building your own game in MPF!

Make sure to lookup mpf-monitor later, if you want to simulate and configure a machine you own in hardware.

What if it did not work?

In the following we list some common problems and solutions. If you got another problem please ask in our MPF User Forum.

YAML error on first start

You might see this error on startup when installing/upgrading to 0.53/dev from an older version:

pkg_resources.VersionConflict: (ruamel.yaml 0.15.37 (c:\users\robert\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages), Requirement.parse('ruamel.yaml<0.11,>=0.10')

What happened? You probably got incompatible versions of MPF, MPF-MC and/or the MPF-Monitor installed. We used to install ruamel 0.11 and switches to 0.15 in MPF 0.53+. MPF cannot start with two yaml libraries. To fix this check your versions pip3 list and check mpf, mpf-mc and mpf-monitor. Remove the wrong version and install the right one. All versions need to match (for instance all 0.53 or all dev).

The following command will remove all three and install the latest release:

pip3 uninstall mpf mpf-mc mpf-monitor
pip3 install mpf mpf-mc mpf-monitor