Why does my Mac (OS X 10.7.3) have an old version (2.3) of Gnu Bison?

Question

The version of GNU Bison on my mac is 2.3 but I know that Bison 2.5 was released long ago. The book Flex & Bison uses version 2.5.

Should I upgrade to 2.5 m

Answer 1

If you use Brew:

brew tap homebrew/dupes && brew install bison

If you use MacPorts:

sudo port install bison

If you use Fink, they're still on 2.3, just like Apple, so you'll have to edit the package yourself.

If you know how to install Unix software, download it, untar, then configure/make/install as usual.

If all of the above are Greek to you, look at http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ and http://macports.org and decide which one looks friendlier to you.