​Homebrew has become a widely recommended package manager for Mac OS X.

This has all been written as though you're using bash (which is the Snow Leopard default). If you're using a tcsh variant, then you'll need to replace all of the export statements with appropriate setenv statements.

Developer Tools

Install Xcode from the ​Apple Developer site.

Homebrew

Install Homebrew using any one of the methods described at ​https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/installation.

I chose to install in my $HOME directory to completely isolate my FiPy installation from my system.

Note: if you choose this option and already have a /usr/local, it is best to move it out of the way:

sudo mv /usr/local /usr/local.saved

You can probably move it back when you're done.

cd ~
mkdir .homebrew 
curl -L https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C .homebrew

Edit your .bashrc file to include

export HOMEBREW=${HOME}/.homebrew
export PATH=${HOMEBREW}/share/python:${HOMEBREW}/bin:$PATH
export PYTHONPATH=${HOMEBREW}/lib/python:${PYTHONPATH}

brew install git
brew update

brew install --universal python

easy_install pip
pip install --upgrade distribute

brew tap homebrew/science

brew install gfortran

brew install cmake

brew install fftw
brew install suite-sparse

For matplotlib and Mayavi

brew install qt

brew install pyqt

For Mayavi

Apply ​vtk patch via brew edit (or otherwise)

brew install --python --qt vtk

brew install wxmac

For PyTrilinos?

brew install swig

Install everything else with pip.

Now you can install PyTrilinos.