I have recently created two Homebrew formulas to help OS X users install GQRX on 10.11, El Capitan. Fortunately most of the dependencies are already available so all I had to do was create a formula for GQRX and Osmosdr. The source to these formulas can be found in my homebrew-godber github project. Though to install GQRX all you have to do is setup my ‘tap’ and then install the package as shown below:

brew tap godber/godber brew update # install some dependencies just in case brew install gnuradio brew install rtl-sdr brew install hackrf # install osmosdr and gqrx from my tap brew install gnuradio-osmosdr brew install gqrx brew linkapps gqrx

Installing the Homebrew packages above are all I had to do to get both my HackRF and NooElec RTL-SDR working with GQRX on El Capitan. Below is a screenshot of GQRX running with my HackRF.

Unfortunately neither GQRX nor Gr-OsmoSDR can be included in Homebrew directly. Since GQRX generates and installs an OS X .app it cannot be included. Perhaps it should be made a Cask, but I can’t find an official release of that .app so I will stick with the formula for now. As for gr-osmosdr, apparently Homebrew audits the packages they include and gr-osmosdr lacks enough GitHub “watches” and “stars”. See this github issue for reference.