I have trawled through all of Google\'s and Stack Overflow\'s search results in order to install stupid OpenCV on my Mac and all the methods have been completely useless.
Steps for those who prefer to build opencv from source
I prefer to use cmake-gui instead of entirely doing this from command line, since that gives you more idea about the options available for opencv configuration and bring you in better position if you want to customize opencv build tomorrow ( like enabling java wrapper or OpenCL etc ).
source path to downloaded opencv directory and build path to
your choice and click Configure button.




CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX - change opencv install pathBUILD_SHARED_LIBS - build static or shared library. etc Then click Configure again. If there are still errors, edit the option(s) causing the error and click Configure button. Repeat the edit / Configure cycle until there are no more errors. Once there are no more errors, proceed to step (8).
A minimal sample config of the WITH tab below. Feel free to play with options. This might cause build problems initially. But your understanding of build, will be better.

make ( in terminal at build folder )make install