This page describes how to update Freeview within a FreeSurfer installation of version 6 or greater. A backup should be made of your freeview binary (or directory) before it is replaced.

Please note the development versions of Freeview will contain the most up to date features but lacks the rigorous testing done before a major release. Therefore, it is imperative that you back up your existing version before replacing it with the development version.

Linux

1. Download and untar the dev freesurfer distribution into a temporary directory (this can be done in any directory).

   mkdir freesurfer.tmp && cd freesurfer.tmp
   curl https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pub/dist/freesurfer/dev/freesurfer-linux-centos7_x86_64-dev.tar.gz -o fsdev.tar.gz
   tar -xzvf fsdev.tar.gz

2. IMPORTANT: make sure that FREESURFER_HOME is properly set to the original freesurfer install you'd like to update, and copy the new freeview binary and qt libraries over. This may require sudo access:

   rm -rf ${FREESURFER_HOME}/lib/qt ${FREESURFER_HOME}/lib/vtk
   cp -r freesurfer/lib/qt ${FREESURFER_HOME}/lib/qt
   cp -r freesurfer/lib/vtk ${FREESURFER_HOME}/lib/vtk
   cp freesurfer/bin/freeview freesurfer/bin/qt.conf ${FREESURFER_HOME}/bin/

3. Remove the temporary directory:

   cd .. && rm -rf freesurfer.tmp

4. You should now have the new application, which can opened by typing freeview on the command line:

   freeview

Mac

1. Go into your $FREESURFER_HOME and create a backup of your existing freeview app (this may require sudo access):

   cd $FREESURFER_HOME
   cp Freeview.app Freeview-backup.app

2. Select the tar archive from which you would like to get a copy of the Freeview application bundle. For the latest development builds, these packages would be: freesurfer-macOS-darwin_x86_64-dev.tar.gz for Intel Macs (darwin_x86_64); freesurfer-macOS-darwin_arm64-dev.tar.gz for arm64 Macs with the M1, M2, M3, M4, M5 processors (darwin_arm64). If you are inside the Martinos Center on a machine that mounts /space/freesurfer, you can copy the above files from the in-house path /space/freesurfer/build/pub-releases/dev

3. Otherwise, for Macs with M-series arm64 processors download freesurfer-macOS-darwin_arm64-dev.tar.gz. For older Macs with Intel processors download freesurfer-macOS-darwin_x86_64-dev.tar.gz

4. Extract the freeview application bundle from the downloaded archive when you are cd'd to be under $FREESURFER_HOME (this may require prefacing the tar command with sudo):

   cd $FREESURFER_HOME
   tar -zxpf <path to>/freesurfer-macOS-darwin_arm64-dev.tar.gz Freeview.app
   OR
   tar -zxpf <path to>/freesurfer-macOS-darwin_x86_64-dev.tar.gz Freeview.app

5. IMPORTANT: If you are replacing freeview in a freesurfer release LESS than 7.0, then you must also remove the line "source $FREESURFER_HOME/sources.csh" from the $FREESURFER_HOME/bin/freeview script