Why?

I am wrapping up my studies in acoustics engineering and merely started job hunting.

Go for a casual walk on Linkedin for "acoustic engineer", and you will come across various entry-level jobs requiring experience/knowledge of using certain proprietary software (MATLAB hey :)

These software suites do not always offer free trials or student versions, and I am neither rich enough to pay for one yet.

That is why I am turning to open-source alternatives, as I need to get some experience :')

What?

I-Simpa is a graphical user interface (GUI) developed to host three-dimensional numerical codes for the modelling of sound propagation in complex geometrical domains. (https://i-simpa-wiki.readthedocs.io/fr/latest/)

Engineered in Université Gustave Eiffel, it could be a good starting point for C/C++-heavy acoustic software development. This software officially supports noise/sound propagations on Windows and Linux, and unfortunately, not Mac. The build toolchains and dependencies are not under active maintenance either.

So what are we going to do? Take a look at the Issues:

So our TODOs would be:

1. Reproduce functional I-Simpa executable on MacOS

2. Translate the steps into Travis

3. Test binary packaging. We expect a DMG installer.

4. (Optional) Optimize build steps and dependencies

5. (Long-term) Add features / Experiment with the numerical methods

So?

I hope this walkthrough could be a log of my work, and hopefully a helpful guide to whoever planning to use this software on MacOS :)