Failed to install Nano editor on Mac

I downloaded the latest version of nano and I followed the instructions described on its website, but I was stopped by step 3:

1. Download the source file (nano-2.2.6.tar.gz) and unpack it.
2. Open Terminal and navigate to the directory (nano-2.2.6) and type
3. ./configure
4. make
5. make install

The error messages are as follows:

Chriss-MacBook-Air:nano-2.2.6 Chris$ ./configure
checking build system type… i386-apple-darwin11.4.0
checking host system type… i386-apple-darwin11.4.0
checking target system type… i386-apple-darwin11.4.0
checking for a BSD-compatible install… /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane… yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p… ./install-sh -c -d
checking for gawk… no
checking for mawk… no
checking for nawk… no
checking for awk… awk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)… no
checking for style of include used by make… none
checking for gcc… no
checking for cc… no
checking for cl.exe… no
configure: error: in /Users/Chris/Downloads/nano-2.2.6':
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
Seeconfig.log’ for more details.
Chriss-MacBook-Air:nano-2.2.6 Chris$

You need to install GCC on you mac. It’s not installed by default — you need to add the development tools.

Installing Xcode will solve your problem.

I was having the same issue. The problem is that on current versions of XCode the command line tools are not installed by default, you have to go to preferences -> downloads and tell xcode to instal the command line tools.