1 Compiling and installing LyX
2 ============================
4 Quick compilation guide
5 -----------------------
7 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
9 0) Linux users beware: You need qt4 and qt4-devel packages
10 of the same version to compile LyX.
12 In general, it is also recommended to have pkg-config
13 installed (the name might vary depending on your
16 1) ./configure configures LyX according to your system. You
17 may have to set --with-qt4-dir=<path-to-your-qt4-installation>
18 (for example, "--with-qt4-dir=/usr/share/qt4/") if the
19 environment variable QTDIR is not set and pkg-config is not
22 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
28 runs the program so you can check it out.
31 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
32 if you want a smaller binary.
35 Note for Git checkouts
36 -----------------------------
38 If you have checked this out from Git, you need to have:
42 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
43 files and proceed as stated above/below.
45 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
51 First of all, you will need a recent C++ compiler, where recent means
52 that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming (gcc 4.x).
54 LyX makes great use of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
55 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
56 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
58 For full LyX usability we suggest to use at least Qt 4.8 which has been
59 widely tested. For compilation you need to compile against at least
60 Qt 4.5.0. The only special point to make is that you must ensure that both
61 LyX and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
63 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
64 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
65 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
68 * Other things to note
70 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
71 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
72 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
74 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
76 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
78 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
79 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
80 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
82 o Python 2.4 or newer must be installed. Python is used for many
83 simple tasks that are executed by external scripts, such as the
84 automatic configuration step and the import of older LyX documents
85 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
86 opening a file). Python 3.0 or later is not supported.
92 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
93 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
94 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
95 to create the Makefile by typing
99 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
102 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
103 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
104 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
106 release prerelease development profiling gprof
107 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
114 The defaults are as follows in terms of version number
115 release: stable release (1.x.y)
116 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
117 development: version number contains dev.
119 The `profiling' build type uses the -fno-omit-frame-pointer option with gcc
121 The `gprof' build type compiles and links with -pg option with gcc.
123 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
124 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
125 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
126 directories, separated by colons.
128 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
129 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
130 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
132 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
133 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
134 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
136 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
137 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
138 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
139 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
142 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
143 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
144 own, by doing something like :
145 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
147 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
148 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
149 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
150 (or --prefix) instead.
152 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
155 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
156 yielding somewhat smaller code.
158 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
159 languages in case you do not want to install all the translation
160 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
161 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
162 export LINGUAS='de fi'
163 before running configure.
165 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
167 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
168 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
170 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
171 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
173 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
175 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
176 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
178 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
179 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
181 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
182 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
183 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
186 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
187 comes to using relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
188 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
190 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
191 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
193 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
194 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
196 Similarly, if you want to force the use of a specific compiler, you can
197 give a value to the CXX variable.
199 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
202 The following options allow you to tweak the generated code more precisely (see the description of --enable-build-type for the default values):
204 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
205 higher level than the default, for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
207 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
208 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
209 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
211 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
212 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try
213 to debug problems in LyX. There is no run-time penalty.
215 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
216 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings.
218 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
219 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
220 is --disable-assertions.
222 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
223 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
226 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
229 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
230 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
231 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
232 flag, please report it as a bug.
234 o --enable-monolithic-build[=boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
235 that enables monolithic build of the given parts of the source
236 code. This should reduce the compilation time provided you have
237 enough memory (>500MB).
240 Compiling and installing LyX
241 ----------------------------
243 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
250 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
251 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
252 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
256 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
257 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
259 If configure fails for some strange reason
260 ------------------------------------------
262 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You can always check
263 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
265 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
266 ------------------------------------
268 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
269 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
270 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
271 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
272 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
273 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
274 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
276 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
277 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
278 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
279 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
285 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
286 team members or users to help compiling on some particular
287 architectures. If you find that some of these hints are wrong, please
290 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
291 work with Solaris make.
293 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
294 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
295 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
297 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
298 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
299 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
300 must issue (as root) the following command:
301 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
302 and then restart the X server.
304 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
305 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
306 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
307 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
308 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
310 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
311 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
312 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
313 done by adding the following stanza
315 <match target="pattern">
316 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
321 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
322 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
323 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
324 /etc/fonts/local.conf exists, you can create them with the following
327 <?xml version="1.0"?>
328 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
330 <match target="pattern">
331 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
336 o Building on Solaris 11.1. Compilation does not work out of the box
337 at the moment (incompatible iconv argument parameters.)
338 One possible solution is to force ./configure to use appropriate
339 POSIX/SUS level, e.g.:
340 CPPFLAGS="-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500" ./configure --disable-nls --prefix=/opt/lyx
341 For details see bug #8783.