1 Compiling and installing LyX
2 ============================
4 Quick compilation guide
5 -----------------------
7 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
10 configures LyX to your system.
16 runs the program so you can check it out.
19 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
20 if you want a smaller binary.
23 Note for CVS checkouts
24 ----------------------
26 If you have checked this out from CVS, you need to have
27 automake, autoconf, and gettext installed. Then,
28 type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
29 files and proceed as stated below.
31 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
36 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
37 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming.
38 Compilers that are known to compile LyX are egcs 1.1.x, gcc 2.95.x and
39 later, and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your
40 experience with other compilers. It is _not_ possible to compile LyX
41 with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x, and this is not likely to change in the
44 Note that, contrary to LyX 1.0.x, LyX 1.2.x makes great use of C++
45 Standard Template Library (STL); this means that gcc users will have
46 to install the relevant libstdc++ library to be able to compile this
51 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
52 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
53 libraries, and their associated header files.
55 The xforms library has been very recently updated to version 1.0.
56 This version has been released under the LGPL (Lesser General Public
57 License), and the availability of the source means that many bugs that
58 have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You are advised to
59 upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
60 In fact, LyX 1.3.0 no longer supports versions of xforms older than 0.89.5.
62 You can get the source from
63 http://world.std.com/~xforms/
64 ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
65 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
67 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
68 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
69 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
70 Look for the xforms-1.0-release.src.rpm or the binary libforms*.i386.rpm.
72 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
76 LyX has been tested with both Qt 2.x and 3.0.x libraries. The only special
77 point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries
78 are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
81 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
82 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
83 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
85 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.11.4.tar.gz
87 LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
90 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
92 http://aiken.clan11.com/aiksaurus/
94 Finally, the two following programs should be available at
97 o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
98 not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
99 variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
100 used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
101 the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
104 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
105 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
106 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
109 Creating the Makefile
110 ---------------------
112 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
113 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
114 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
115 to create the Makefile by typing
119 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
122 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will find
123 extra libraries (Xpm, xforms) it needs. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search
124 in standard places). You can specify several directories, separated
127 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
128 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
129 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
131 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
132 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
133 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
135 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.2.0
136 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.2.0/.
137 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
140 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX on
141 the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your own,
142 by doing something like : ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
144 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,--program-suffix
145 and the others will not affect the shared LyX directory etc. so it
146 is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix (or --prefix) instead.
148 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
149 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
151 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
152 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
153 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
155 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
156 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
157 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
158 for development versions and prereleases only.
160 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
163 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
164 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
166 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
167 library, although you might have another one installed.
169 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
170 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
173 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
174 language in case ou do not want to install all the translation
175 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
176 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
177 export LINGUAS='de fi'
178 before running configure.
180 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
182 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
183 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
185 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
186 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
187 definitions) will be installed.
188 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
190 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
191 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
193 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
194 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
196 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
197 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
198 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
200 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
201 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
203 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
204 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
206 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
207 give a value to the CXX variable.
209 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
212 In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
215 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
216 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
217 this flag is on for development versions only.
219 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
220 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
221 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
222 development versions only.
224 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
225 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
226 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
227 flag, please report it as a bug.
230 Compiling and installing LyX
231 ----------------------------
233 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
240 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
241 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
242 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
246 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
247 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
249 If configure fails for some strange reason
250 ------------------------------------------
252 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
253 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
255 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
256 ------------------------------------
258 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
259 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
260 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
261 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
262 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
263 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
264 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
266 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
267 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
268 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
269 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
272 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
273 ------------------------------------------------------
275 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
276 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
277 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
280 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
281 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
282 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
285 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
286 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
287 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
289 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
290 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
291 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
293 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
294 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
300 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
301 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
302 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
305 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
306 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
307 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
309 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
310 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
312 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
313 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
314 whatever it is called in your distribution).
316 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
317 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
318 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
321 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
322 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
323 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
325 o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
327 ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
328 ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
330 then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
333 o On solaris 2.6, you may have to compile with --with-included-string
334 if compiling with gcc 2.95.2.
336 o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
339 There are no Alpha-specific problems with gcc.
341 The following notes all refer to compilation with the Compaq cxx compiler.
343 LyX cannot be compiled on Tru64 Unix 4.0d or 4.0e with the default cxx
344 compiler. You should upgrade to at least cxx V6.2, to be found at
345 ftp::/ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/C-CXX/tru64/cxx/CXX622V40.tar. Users
346 running Tru64 Unix 4.0f and greater should have no real problems compiling
349 cxx V6.2 will compile LyX out of the box.
350 cxx V6.3-020 is also known to work, although there is a bug in
351 /usr/include/cxx/deque that will break compilation in FormPreferences.C.
352 Compaq are investigating, but a patch that works /now/ is:
354 --- /usr/include/cxx/deque_safe Mon Mar 4 21:09:50 2002
355 +++ /usr/include/cxx/deque Mon Mar 4 21:09:00 2002
358 if (size() >= x.size())
359 erase(copy(x.begin(), x.end(), begin()), end());
361 - copy(x.begin() + size(), x.end(),
362 - inserter(*this,copy(x.begin(),x.begin()+size(),begin())));
364 + const_iterator mid = x.begin() + difference_type(size());
365 + copy(x.begin(), mid, begin());
366 + insert(end(), mid, x.end());
372 At the time of writing, cxx V6.5-026 is the latest cxx compiler. It is
373 /not/ recommended. The compiler itself appears to be both buggy and
374 extremely bloated (trebling the size of the stripped LyX binary).
376 In order to compile LyX with the cxx compiler, you should run configure
377 with the following flags:
378 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
379 CXXFLAGS='-nopure_cname -nocleanup -ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -O2'
381 The -nopure_cname flag is needed for compilers V6.3 and above because
382 LyX makes use of functions like popen, pclose that are defined in the
383 c version of <stdio.h> but are not formally part of any c/c++ standard.
384 They are not, therefore, included in the <cstdio> header file.