Here's what I did:
1. Downloaded the 64-bit binary of Visit 2.4.2 from the Visit web site 2. Downloaded the CarpetHDF directory via svn. 3. Downloaded hdf5-1.8.9 source via ftp. I just put it in the CarpetHDF5 directory. Did a make and make installŠ. "HDF5 Directory" is then .../hdf5-1.8.9/hdf5/ (see below) 4. Made sure "Remote Login" is enabled under "Sharing" in "System Preferences". Visit uses this. Went ahead and did a "ssh localhost" just to make sure. I was actually prompted to confirm an address because I'm on LSU's network right now. (Presumably Visit needs a clean login with no pesky questions or password prompts.) 5. Created symbolic links in /usr/lib to whichever MPI libraries I planned to use. Older versions of OS X had native MPI support, and this is hard coded in the binary you get from the visit site. I use OpenMPI and MacPorts, so I went to /usr/lib and did "sudo ln -s /opt/local/lib/libmpi* ." 6. Deleted my ~/.visit directory entirely. This may not be necessary. 7. Went in the CarpetHDF5 and ran ./install and Šbasically just did what was in the readme, that is: in the xmledit window, clicked on "Cmake" and then updated the flags, as in
CXXFLAGS = -I/Applications/VisIt.app/Contents/Resources/2.4.2/darwin-x86_64/include -I/Users/shawley/apps/VizTools/CarpetHDF5/hdf5-1.8.9/hdf5/include LDFLAGS = -L/Applications/VisIt.app/Contents/Resources/2.4.2/darwin-x86_64/lib -L/Users/shawley/apps/VizTools/CarpetHDF5/hdf5-1.8.9/hdf5/lib Saved and closed the window, let it do its thing... 8. Ran visit from the command line, using the -noconfig option. The latest version of Visit has a problem with "localhost" on Mac, for some reason. so visit -noconfig
..and then visit came up, I opened a .h5 file and was able to do all the usual things with it!
Good luck! -Scott