When I head over at Kyngchaos QGIS page I notice the latest version isn't available. Also when it comes to nightly builds it seems like the ones over at Dakota Cartography hasn't been updated since september 2016.
Are there any other sources of recent versions for Mac without compiling it all from scratch?
The 2.x versions of QGIS uses the Apple Python (2.7.x, preinstalled) with Frameworks (GDAL, PROJ, ..) :
The future 3.x version and the nightly builds use now Python 3.x, but this version is not preinstalled
Therefore, you have many solutions
1) Wait for the William Kyngesburye solutions (he is alone...)
2) Use a software package management system (Homebrew) that install all in /urs/local/ (new version of Python, libraries, QGIS : How to Install QGIS with Homebrew on macOS). This is the new solution of Larry Shaffer (osgeo4mac) for nightly builds.
There is NextGIS QGIS network installer. This is not latest QGIS 2.18, but 2.14 (the 2.18 is in testing now). Get it here.
Also this installer has the autoupdate feature. The only changed parts of installation will be updated. The message pane will be shown in QGIS if some updates are available. This is very user friendly.
update !
according to the log on qgis.dakotacarto.com there haven't been updates since 2014-06-20. still you'll find just links to dakota-page when searching for mac master/nigthtly build versions for mac.
does anybody know any alternatives without homebrewing and home-compilation ? i am asking for that because i am a non expert in any kind of mac internals like massive scripting and compiling. but (!) i am interested in a stable version for macos right from the beginning of version 3.x - thats the reason why i would appreciate to take part in a "beta-testing-for-mac" initiative. if there is any ...
(just to mention: some versions ago somebody from the issues.qgis.org-team complained about mac-testing - due to a lack of testers ... no master-version -> no testing)
