
If you are looking to download and install YACC then you can find complete instructions on " installing Berkeley Yet Another Compiler Compiler (byacc) on Ubuntu Linux". That will make it easier for everyone in case you need help from your teacher if something doesn't work as expected.NOTE: You have to install m4 (general purpose macro processor) before installing Bison (GNU Parser Generator). If you're just getting started with Linux, it might be a better idea to just install Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine so that you get the hang of it and also be in line with what the teacher is expecting everyone to be using. So if your teacher says run 'apt update' to update your repository metadata, you need to understand that the equivalent Homebrew command will be different and if you try to run 'apt update' on your Mac, it won't work. For instance the package manager for Ubuntu is 'apt', whereas Homebrew uses 'brew'. You'll also have to be aware of any differences in the environment if your teacher is expecting everyone to be using Ubuntu. So it could happen that a certain program may, for instance, have a different set of option flags or something that differ from one to the other. The package managers for Ubuntu and Homebrew may have chosen different options to compile the programs they keep in their repositories. That's not to say that there might not be differences. So if Homebrew has the programs you need, then they will be able to be installed and run on your Mac without Linux. Homebrew manages its own repository of compiled programs for the Mac. flex and bison) that you can download and install. But Linux and macOS are both "Unix-like" operating systems, so many programs that can be compiled for Linux can also be compiled for macOS fairly easily.Ī Linux operating system (such as Ubuntu), will have a repository of compiled programs (e.g. As such, people have put in the work to compile them on multiple operating systems. Programs such as flex and bison are open source programs.
